With schools back in session and Fall sports slowly beginning to retake their rightful ownership of the weekends of families throughout the US, questions remain for hotel performance moving forward. Although, looking back over the summer months, while there have been a fair number of green shoots, at least one conclusion is certain: Weekly hotel occupancy trends, month over month, continue to repeat themselves.
According to the latest data from the MAPP Report, by myDigitalOffice, monthly entry and exit occupancy for June, July, and August shows little change from month to month. July and August, however, do seem to have crept closer to the exit range of ~35% occupancy slightly sooner than we saw in June.
The new data did, in fact, highlight a few interesting trends over Labor Day weekend.
– Are higher-end chain scales beginning to take back portions of their share of wallet? For months now, economy and midscale hotels have been carrying us from an overall occupancy perspective. But for the holiday weekend (using Fri, Sat, and Sun averages), total hotel rooms from all classes but upper-upscale and luxury were over half full. This is a wider spread in demand, across chain-scales, that we’ve seen in some time. Good news? We think so.
– Short term booking windows remain evident. In the three weeks leading into the holiday, including the holiday weekend dates, occupancy for Labor Day weekend jumped by 30% across the US.
Looking ahead, for September and October, we can only hope to see similar “last minute” demand spikes. As of 9/15, our latest data shows the US at 30% occupancy. Which could be viewed as a positive sign, being just two weeks into the month, and maybe it is positive. But, of course, we did have the last summer holiday weekend of the season to help pad those stats. October, though, is already approaching 15% occupancy, a number that previous months didn’t reach until weeks later. Another green shoot? We hope so!
