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As we get closer to the holidays, hotel occupancy begins to slow, and this year was no exception. U.S. occupancy for the week of 11-17 December fell to 54.5% from 59.6% in the prior week. The decrease fell in line with expectations based on prior years. All days of the week saw a week-over-week (WoW) decrease with Tuesday through Thursday seeing the largest declines at -6.5 percentage points (ppts) and the remainder of days dropping by an average of 4ppts.

The week after Thanksgiving (27 November-3 December) was somewhat typical for the U.S. hotel industry. Occupancy increased to 55.4% from 50.3% in the week prior. Room demand was up 10% week over week (WoW), which was below our expectations, but still the second highest number of rooms sold for the week after Thanksgiving during the past 23 years.

The demand index declined month over month, with contribution from most days of the week.

In what turned out to be a normal Thanksgiving week, U.S. hotel occupancy for 20-26 November was 50.4%. That was down from 52.9% a year ago and 50.6% in 2019. Nearly every market saw occupancy fall year over year despite more airline travel, which was 95% of 2019’s volume. A year ago, 89 of the 166 STR-defined U.S. markets saw occupancy above 50%. This year, 64 markets saw the same, which was close to the tally in 2019.

During the week of 16-22 October 2022, U.S. hotel occupancy was almost flat, dipping 0.4 percentage points (ppts) week over week (WoW) to 69.9%. That level was the seventh highest for this particular week since 2000 and 0.3ppts less than in 2019. The week-over-week slowdown is normal as performance for this specific week has only gone up four times in the past 23 years.