The number of hotel stays around the world outside of the US continues to rise, and some of this growth is due to the number of US hotel stays.
Year-over-year weekly occupancy comparisons are relatively flat for US hotels – indicating that performance is improving – but these metrics are running below pre-pandemic levels. This lack of growth was due in part to the increasing number of American travelers traveling to other countries that have not been reached due to pandemic-related restrictions.
However, for the most recent week of writing, ends July 15, the number of people staying at a hotel in the US was 72% – an increase of 10.2 percent from the previous week, when the demand for hotels was closed by Tuesday, the Fourth of July holiday. This is the highest week-to-week change in US hotel occupancy this year, and the third best since March 2020.
Compared to the same week in 2022, the population increased slightly, by 0.1%, and decreased by almost 2 percent from 2019. The company sold 28 million hotel rooms during the week, which due to the high availability was the second-best since 2020, behind the rate established at the end of July last year.
The good news for US hoteliers is that performance is expected to peak over the next two weeks.
Despite the low occupancy, the average daily US hotel rate remained high, rising 1.5% to $158 compared to the same week last year. This resulted in a 1.6% increase in revenue per room to $115.
The top 25 hotel markets in the US performed better than the global average in a year-over-year comparison. During the same week in 2022, occupancy increased 0.8% to 76% and weekly ADR increased 2.3%, raising RevPAR by 3.4%, exceeding the 3% increase.
Several of the top 25 markets reported double RevPAR growth year-over-year, led by gains of 25.9% in Denver and 16.1% in Las Vegas. In terms of housing, San Diego, Denver and Las Vegas lead the country – all above 85% – with San Diego at 93.2%. Atlanta and San Diego both reported their highest occupancy during the pandemic.
Denver benefited from Taylor Swift’s three-night Saturday tour with 96% ADR at $241. The Yankees were also in town.
Across the region, Alaska had the fourth highest population in the world at 87.1%, followed by Colorado Springs at 84.5%, which may have been influenced by the presence of Taylor Swift in nearby Denver.
The global population, excluding the US, reached 72.4% after the pandemic, 1.5 percentage points higher than last week. The number of people for the week was 5.7 percent higher than the level set a year ago. ADR increased 9.3% year over year to $155 while RevPAR increased 18.6% to $112.
It was another record-breaking week for the top 10 countries based on the number of properties with residents increasing by 1.1 percentage points each week to reach 75.2%. This represents a 7.1-percent gain over the same week last year. The top 10’s ADR grew 7.4% to $146, resulting in a total RevPAR of $110, up 18.7% year over year.
Among the top 10, the UK continued to send the most people to the world at 84.6%, which was the third highest country in 2023 and 0.5 percentage points more than the same week in 2022. The UK hotel stay was 5.2 percentage points ahead of the next country in the top 10, which was Italy at 78%.
Outside the top 10, five countries had a higher population than the UK Ireland also took the top spot, rising 2.2 percentage points year on year to 88%, followed by Malta on 87.6% and Fiji on 87.4%.
Chris Klauda is STR’s chief market officer. Isaac Collazo is vice president of analytics at STR. William Anns is an expert on STR.
This article represents an interpretation of data collected by the CoStar Hospitality analytics team. Please feel free to contact the editor with any questions or concerns. To review more CoStar Hospitality data, visit the data insights blog.
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