by Calculated Risk on 3/25/2021 12:57:00 PM

Note: Starting this week, the year-over-year comparisons are easy - since occupancy declined sharply at the onset of the pandemic - but occupancy is still down significantly from normal levels.

The occupancy rate is down 15.4% compared to the same week in 2019.

From CoStar: STR: US Weekly Hotel Occupancy Reaches 85% of 2019 Level

U.S. weekly hotel occupancy jumped almost seven points from the previous week to the highest level in the country since early March 2020, according to STR‘s latest data through March 20, 2021.

March 14-20, 2021:

• Occupancy: 58.9%
• verage daily rate (ADR): US$108.07
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$63.62

The 58.9% absolute occupancy was a 93.9% increase from the comparable, pandemic-affected week last year, but more importantly, represented almost 85% of occupancy regained from the 2019 benchmark. There was also more improvement in ADR, which reached 81% of the comparable 2019 level.
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.

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