According to STR‘s latest data through April 24, U.S. weekly hotel occupancy remained flat from the previous week. For the week of April 18-24, occupancy was 57.3 percent, average daily rate was $108.10 and revenue per available room was $61.93. On a total-room-inventory basis, which includes temporarily closed hotels, occupancy was 54.4 percent.
Overall industry occupancy likely will remain plateaued until the summer leisure travel boom, but there has been noticeable uptick in weekday occupancy, which is indicative of increased business travel. ADR was up slightly from the previous week, and the luxury, midscale and economy classes each have recovered more than 90 percent of their 2019 ADR levels.
According to the Market Recovery Monitor, weekend occupancy was above 70 percent, or 67 percent on a total-room-inventory basis. The report notes that weekday occupancy has been growing steadily over the past month: In reviewing the room demand growth in the past four weeks versus the previous four weeks, weekday demand increased an average of 16 percent over the period versus a 10 percent increase on weekends.
The percentage of hotels with weekly occupancy above 60 percent went unchanged and remained above 52 percent. Large hotels with more than 300 rooms had the largest weekly occupancy gain week on week (+0.4pts) but occupancy stayed low on an absolute basis. When indexed to the comparable week in 2019, room demand for large hotels was less than half. Room demand for small (under 75 rooms) and medium (75–299 rooms) hotels continued to be strong: These types of hotels have regained more than 90 percent of the demand they had in 2019 during the past six weeks.
Top 25 Markets
Among the top 25 markets, Tampa, Fla., (73.7 percent) and Miami (72 percent) experienced the highest occupancy levels. The lowest top 25 occupancy levels came in San Francisco/San Mateo (41 percent) and Washington, D.C. (42.8 percent).
Aggregate data for the top 25 markets showed slightly lower occupancy (55.1 percent) but higher ADR ($117) than all other markets.