The U.S. summer leisure travel season has come to a close, and with it has come the usual seasonal slowdown in travel demand.
Emmy Hise, senior director of hospitality market analytics at CoStar Group, said Transportation Security Administration passenger data is up year over year, but the rate of growth has slowed in September and October. Passenger levels were up 1.7% year over year in September and only 0.4% through Oct. 23.
"The slower growth in October passenger levels could be due to hurricanes and Jewish holiday calendar shifts," Hise said. "This could also be why TSA passenger levels and topline hotel performance year-over-year changes behaved differently during these two months."
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur fell in October this year after being in September last year. Topline hotel performance in the U.S. declined in September, Hise said.
"The holiday shift increased group occupancy from conference and convention activity but not enough to offset the slowdown in the other travel segments. Due to the Jewish holiday shift, October group performance declined," she said.
Overall, topline hotel performance through Oct. 19 was positive, despite air passenger growth being less than 1%. Hotel market occupancy increased more than 16% month-to-date in Tampa, the most significant occupancy gain of the top 25 markets.
"Some of this could be attributed to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, causing displaced residents to seek refuge in hotels. In October, Hurricane Milton shut down many airports in Florida, but that didn’t stop demand for hotels from locals or disaster relief agencies," she said.