An increasing number of hotel owners in the US market are simply walking away from money-losing properties and forfeiting them to lenders.

The rise in hotel forfeitures is the product of the worst hotel market since the early 1990s, with revenue declining by double-digit percentages. That has pushed the value of many hotels to less than the balance on their mortgages. Just like homeowners who mail their house keys back to the bank hotel owners see no hope in renegotiating their loans.

Distressed non-casino hotel loans now cover more than 1,000 properties with a cumulative loan value of $16.8bn, according to Real Capital Analytics, a real-estate research company. That figure encompasses delinquencies, foreclosures, bankruptcies and restructurings of securitised mortgages in addition to loans from banks and other institutions.

Wall Street Journal