U.S. hotel occupancy for the week of April 23-29 dipped from the previous week, but at 66.6% was still the third best of the year so far. Meanwhile, excluding the U.S., global hotel occupancy inched over 70%, the highest level since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
The latest weekly data from CoStar hospitality analytics firm STR shows hotel performance overall held relatively steady. However, a slowdown in growth is expected in the weeks ahead, which is typical of the transition period between the spring and summer travel seasons.
As leisure travel has moderated with school still in session, hotels have been helped by modest but steady increases in demand for hotel rooms from groups and business travelers.
In the U.S., that is illustrated by performance in the top 25 hotel markets, which outperformed the U.S. as a whole with weekly occupancy of 73.7%. Also, bookings at luxury and upper-upscale hotels totaled 2.23 million room nights in the week. Weekday occupancy is also strengthening year over year while weekend occupancy softens.
US Hotel Performance Highlights
U.S. hotel industry weekly occupancy slipped by 0.5 percentage points from the prior week, which set a demand record for that particular week of the year with nearly 26 million room nights sold.
Average daily rate held steady at $156, and has remained in the mid-$150s for the past six weeks after peaking in mid-March at $166. On an annual basis, ADR grew by 5.4% compared to the same week in 2022 — just ahead of the pace of inflation rate (5%). Adjusted for inflation, ADR was 1.4% higher than in the comparable week of 2019.
Revenue per available room fell week over week by $1 to an average of $104, but was up 5.5% year over year.
For the fourth consecutive week, New York City led the top 25 markets with 87.8% occupancy, up 5.8 percentage points week over week. Las Vegas was next with 81.5% occupancy, up 0.9 percentage points from the previous week. The largest year-over-year gain among the top 25 markets was in San Francisco, where occupancy was up 14.5% from the same week in 2022 to 81.1%.
The RSA Conference, a large technology conference held in San Francisco, boosted the market’s weekday occupancy to 92.3%.
Six of the best 10 weekday-occupancy markets in the U.S. were with within the top 25, including New York (89.3%); Washington, D.C. (82.0%); Boston (81.1%); and Nashville (80%).
Global Performance
Global occupancy, excluding the U.S., improved by 2.6 percentage points from the previous week and was almost 15 percentage points ahead of last year. Weekly ADR rose 14.9% year over year to $141, resulting in RevPAR increase of more than 50% from last year.
Among the top 10 countries based on supply, occupancy was 71.7%, which was also highest level since the start of the pandemic and up 16 percentage points year over year. Several holidays across the globe took place — including the Eid al-Fitr holiday and the May Day holiday — which may have provided a boost to the preceding weekend.
The United Kingdom had the highest occupancy among the top 10 countries at 83.1%, followed by Spain at 76.4%. The largest year-over-year occupancy gain was in China, where occupancy was up 27 percentage points to 70.6%, but down from its pandemic-era high of 74/2% two weeks ago.
Outside the 10 largest supply countries, countries with hotel occupancy above 80% for the week included Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
Isaac Collazo is VP of analytics at STR, Chris Klauda is senior director of market insights at STR and M. Brian Riley is senior research analyst at STR.
This article represents an interpretation of data collected by CoStar's hospitality analytics firm, STR. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concerns. For more analysis of STR data, visit the data insights blog on STR.com.