GLOBAL REPORT—Hotels in markets that celebrate the Easter holiday may see a hop in occupancy on the Saturday before.
STR analysis of Easter hotel performance in the U.S. and global markets shows hotels traditionally sell about 15% more rooms on the Saturday before Easter Sunday. (STR is the parent company of Hotel News Now.)
That’s not surprising to see in the U.S., which unlike most of Europe does not officially observe Easter Monday as a holiday, said Jan Freitag, SVP of lodging insights for STR, parent company of Hotel News Now.
“Monday is a workday in the U.S., so you would expect Saturday to be higher. It always is,” Freitag said. “In Europe, the Monday (following Easter) is often a holiday so that could account for some demand increase and hence higher occupancies on Sunday when you look at the global data compared to the U.S.”
On Easter Sunday 2016, which fell on 27 March, U.S. hotel occupancy was on average 44.6%, while global occupancy (including the U.S.) was 50.3%, according to STR data. (Sample size for the global data accounted for 41% of markets in 2016.)
However, Easter Sunday hotel occupancy in the U.S. has shown a slight uptick since 2013. “Just looking at Sundays between 2000 and 2012, only one Easter Sunday (2005) had occupancy of 42%. From 2013 on, all were over 42% occupancy,” Freitag said.
Check the infographic below for more Easter holiday hotel performance and trends.
