Data KC: When we travel, we prefer to stay at Hampton Inn, Comfort Inn

It’s the time of year for holiday trips, and when we travel, Kansas City area residents spread our business among many hotel brands, according to the latest data from Scarborough Research.

The firm surveyed nearly 2,000 adults ages 18 and older in Kansas City’s 33-county marketing region about where they had stayed in the 12 months from September 2014 through August 2015. Two chains led the list: Hampton Inn at 11.6 percent and Comfort Inn at 11.5 percent, followed by venerable Holiday Inn at 10.1 percent.

In the next group, Marriott, Courtyard by Marriott, Best Western and Days Inn each were visited by 8 percent to 8.5 percent of respondents who had a hotel stay in the past year. Projected out to the region’s nearly 1.9 million adults, each of those chains would’ve been visited by 150,000 to 160,000 people.

The survey asked specifically about 23 brands but still came up with 19.4 percent of those who had stayed in “other hotel or motel.”

Breakdowns of the area’s five main counties showed each with a different favorite: Marriott (16.5 percent) for Clay, Hampton Inn (10.3 percent) for Jackson, Comfort Inn (16.3 percent) for Johnson, Holiday Inn (15.8 percent) for Platte, and Super 8 (22.7 percent) for Wyandotte.

But it might come as a surprise that well over one-third of those responding, 37.6 percent, said they hadn’t stayed in a hotel or motel in the past 12 months.

This story was originally published December 11, 2015 at 3:00 AM with the headline "Data KC: When we travel, we prefer to stay at Hampton Inn, Comfort Inn."