STR: U.S. hotels occupancy up to nearly 40 percent first week of June

STR data showed a slight improvement in the U.S. hotel performance for the week ending June 6.

The occupancy rate for U.S. hotels rose to 39.3 percent during the first week of June, slightly up from 36.4 percent reported a week before, according to STR. Compared to the same period in 2019 occupancy was down 45.3 percent.

ADR for the week of May 31 to June 6 was $85.01, down 35.9 percent from last year, while RevPAR dipped 65 percent to $33.43. The occupancy rate was 36.4 percent for the week ending May 30, and 22 percent for the week of April 5 to 11. This shows an improvement of almost 18 percent in two months.

“Not much different from previous weeks, occupancy continued to climb toward the 40 percent mark with noticeably higher levels on Friday and Saturday. The lower end of the market continued to lead, with economy properties finally selling more than half of their rooms again, although all hotel classes were comfortably above 20 percent,” said Jan Freitag, STR’s senior vice president of lodging insights.

“Drilling down to the submarket level, the highest occupancy levels were recorded in various pockets of New York City as well as popular leisure spots in Florida, Texas and South Carolina. Thanks to higher demand, one submarket, West Palm Beach, showed a 21 percent year-over-year ADR increase for the entire week.”

Aggregate data for the top 25 markets among U.S. hotels showed lower occupancy of 35.4 percent than the national average, but slightly higher ADR at $88.54, the data revealed.

ADR for Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Virginia, rose 48.4 percent;  47.1 percent for New York;  44.7 percent for Phoenix;  42.8 percent for Philadelphia; 41.8 percent for Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida;  41.4 percent for Atlanta; and 40.8 percent for Detroit.

Occupancy in Seattle was 29.5 percent, up slightly from 28.1 percent the week prior.

Meanwhile, ADR was lowest for Oahu Island, Hawaii, down 10.6 percent; Orlando, Florida, down 23.5 percent; and Boston, down 24 percent.

According to Freitag, there was not much demand in downtown areas and most of the major metros showed small gains.