by Calculated Risk on 2/18/2021 11:53:00 AM

From CoStar: STR: Valentine's Day, Holiday Weekend Boost US Hotel Occupancy

U.S. hotel occupancy increased more than 4 percentage points from the previous week, according to STR‘s latest data through Feb. 13.

Feb. 7-13, 2021 (percentage change from comparable week in 2020):

• Occupancy: 45.1% (-29.0%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): US$99.21 (-25.7%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$44.72 (-47.2%)

Boosted by Valentine’s Day and the long weekend with Presidents Day, U.S. weekend occupancy (Friday/Saturday) came in at 58.5%, which was the highest level in the metric since mid-October. Elevated occupancy during the weekend of Presidents Day occurred during previous recessions as well.
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 prior to 2020).

Even when occupancy increases to 2009 levels, hotels will still be hurting.

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.