Super Bowl Sunday, a high-performing Monday and a soft Presidents Day weekend were the most important factors in the latest week of U.S. hotel industry data.
For the week of Feb. 11-17, CoStar data shows U.S. revenue per available room increased 1.6% year over year, driven entirely by a 4.2% rise in average daily rate as occupancy declined for an eighth consecutive week.
The week started out strong and that performance tapered off as the days went by.
Sunday produced the largest RevPAR gain of the week, up 19%, followed by Monday with an 11.6% gain. The Super Bowl in Las Vegas drove the overall Sunday increase. Excluding Las Vegas, U.S. Sunday RevPAR decreased 4.8%. However, Monday’s RevPAR increase held at 10%. The strong Monday performance was most likely a combination of Mardi Gras, Chinese New Year and other celebrations, major events and weather issues.
U.S. hotel RevPAR on Tuesday was up 1.6% year over year, but the metric steadily declined from there. Wednesday and Thursday RevPAR was down 1.4%; and for the Friday and Saturday of Presidents Day weekend, it was down 3.6% compared to the same week in 2023.
Occupancy for Presidents Day weekend, which typically draws increased leisure travel, was 71.4%, which was the highest weekend occupancy since November although 2.6 percentage points lower than last year’s Presidents Day weekend.
ADR was up on all days except Saturday, but from Wednesday through Friday, the increase was below the rate of inflation. Occupancy decreased for all days except Monday, when there was a 1.9-percentage-point advantage. Decreases hovered around two percentage points Tuesday through Friday. Saturday ADR decreased 3.1 percentage points.
The top 25 markets had a better week than the rest of the country. RevPAR increased 7.3%, led completely by ADR and the Super Bowl boost. Excluding Las Vegas, RevPAR fell 1.1% with both ADR and occupancy down.
Leading RevPAR growth in the top 25 markets were Las Vegas (+81.4%), San Francisco (+14.4%) and Oahu (+14.3%).
On Super Bowl Sunday, Las Vegas hotel ADR was $808 and occupancy was 81%. The market continued to benefit from the Super Bowl the rest of the week with RevPAR over the next six days up 35.2% compared to the same six days last year.
Oahu’s strong performance was lifted by market events, and San Francisco benefited from a large medical conference. New Orleans’ Mardi Gras celebrations resulted in RevPAR gains of more than 100% on Sunday through Tuesday due to a calendar shift. A year ago, Mardi Gras occurred two weeks later.
Indianapolis was the best-performing market outside of the top 25 due to its hosting of the NBA All-Star game on Sunday, Feb. 18. The market saw steady RevPAR gains all week with Thursday through Saturday growth surpassing 100%.
Group demand continued to strengthen at luxury and upper-upscale hotels up for a sixth consecutive week, increasing 3.4% compared to the same week last year and up 7.9% over the past four weeks. Group ADR was up 8.5% and has grown 5.8% over the past four weeks. Fifteen of the top 25 markets posted year-over-year group occupancy gains. Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Las Vegas, Oahu and San Francisco posted the largest year-over-year occupancy increases.
Global Performance
The 10 countries with the largest hotel supply outside of the U.S. posted occupancy that was largely in line with the comparable week last year. In seven of the 10 countries, the year-over-year occupancy difference was between a 2-percentage-point decline and a 2-percentage-point gain.
Occupancy for the week was 77.1% in both Spain and Australia, up 4.7 percentage points in Spain and up 4.6 percentage points in Australia. ADR in Australia was also up 11.5% year over year, in no small part due to Taylor Swift’s largest ever performances in Melbourne, boosting ADR for the city by 36.8%.
The strong occupancy performance in Spain continued to be driven by the eastern Mediterranean coast region, up 13.8 percentage points to 69.5%; and the southern Andalucía region, up 9.7 percentage points to 72.6%. RevPAR was up 36.8% in the Mediterranean Coast region, driven mostly by occupancy growth. In Andalucia, ADR was largely responsible for RevPAR growth of 31.6%.
ADR for the top 10 in aggregate was up 18.9%, resulting in a RevPAR gain of 20.7%. So far this year, there has been a wider variation in weekly RevPAR growth compared to last year.
Indonesia hotel occupancy for the week was down 15.3 percentage points year over year to 48.9%, the largest occupancy decline of the top 10 countries. While some Chinese New Year celebrations took place at the beginning of the week, Feb. 14 was the country’s general election with more than 200 million registered voters spread out over the country’s 6,000 inhabited islands. As a result, 10 of the country’s 12 markets posted occupancy decreases. A similar decline in occupancy was noticeable during the country’s last election in 2019.
Isaac Collazo is vice president of analytics at STR. Chris Klauda is senior director of market insights at STR. William Anns is a 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.