by Calculated Risk on 1/14/2021 11:02:00 AM

From HotelNewsNow.com: STR: US hotel results for week ending 9 January

U.S. weekly hotel occupancy fell back below the 40% mark, according to STR‘s latest data through 9 January.

3-9 January 2021 (percentage change from comparable week in 2020):

• Occupancy: 37.0% (-28.3%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): US$87.97 (-27.1%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$32.59 (-47.7%)

The previous week’s occupancy was lifted by New Year’s travel. As that holiday travel dissipated, TSA checkpoint counts and hotel room demand each declined by roughly 1.3 million in a week-over-week comparison.
emphasis added

The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average.

Click on graph for larger image.

The red line is for 2021, black is 2020, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2009 (the worst year since the Great Depression for hotels - before 2020).

Seasonally we'd expect that business travel would start to pick up in the new year, but there will probably not be much pickup early in 2021.

Note: Y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the seasonal change.