Winter Storm Fern wreaked havoc on U.S. hotel performance in the week of Jan. 25-31 as revenue per available room fell 4% on declining occupancy (-2.4 percentage points) and unresponsive average daily rate (+0.2%).
The performance changes were highest at the beginning of the week when the storm caused widespread airline cancellations and roads were dangerous. The sweeping size of Fern, which encompassed nearly 2,000 miles, caused the disruptions to be felt across the entire U.S. and particularly in southern hotel markets.
Our analysis shows 74 U.S. hotel markets that were directly affected by Winter Storm Fern. Most U.S. markets were affected by the storm in some fashion, but the markets within the path of the storm exasperated the trends we saw throughout the week.
Sunday, Jan. 25 stood out in stark contrast to the rest of the week. Sunday hotel RevPAR was up 9.5% and overall demand was up 9.4%. Every day that followed was down in each of these metrics. This one-day lift in performance was due to a combination of flight cancellations and power outages. Airport locations, where hotel demand increased by 32%, saw RevPAR advance 46% on that day versus high-single digit increases in all other location types.
Power outages also reached their peak across the Southern states. Markets within the path of the storm felt this impact on a larger scale as occupancy jumped 5.5 percentage points on Sunday driven by a 14.9% increase in demand. Markets outside the path of the storm also felt the downstream effects of flight cancellations from airline hubs, as room demand increased 5.8%.
Monday through Wednesday was completely different. U.S. hotel RevPAR fell 8.8%, while demand declined 8.9%. Through Wednesday, six U.S. states were still in a state of emergency and the remaining states in the path were still dealing with the infrastructure damage caused by the storm, having a very large impact on hotel demand. From Monday to Wednesday, U.S. hotel demand was down 887,000 rooms mostly driven by Fern markets, which accounted for 69% of demand lost. Occupancy fell 8.6 percentage points in these markets and ADR was down 2.3%.
Thursday through Sunday, continued to feel the downstream effects of the storm but to a lesser extent. RevPAR was down 2.3% and demand was down 1.4% over these days. Once again, markets directly in the path of the storm felt the greater impact for these days as RevPAR fell 3.7% and demand decreased 2.9%.
Although Fern’s impact on U.S. hotel demand created a common trend throughout the country, there were specific markets that were unique. Nashville was one of the most affected markets by the winter storm, as roughly half of the population lost power at the height of the storm. In response, hotels offered discounted rates for residents. Nashville was one of the few Fern markets to see an increase in weekly hotel RevPAR (+7%) despite 13.8% decline in ADR, due to room demand jumping 27.3% and occupancy increasing 13.8 percentage points.
On top of the winter storm, the U.S. still had to overcome the existing headwinds of hurricane markets and Las Vegas. Hurricane markets, some of which were also affected by the storm saw RevPAR dive 18.5% on a 13.8% decrease in demand. While demand was down in all 13 markets, the largest decreases were in those markets affected by the winter storm.
Las Vegas RevPAR was down 14.2% in the week as demand dropped 10.3% with sharper decreases Wednesday through Friday due to group shifts, including a date change for the Tobacco Plus Expo, now called Total Product Expo. If you exclude markets affected by Winter Storm Fern, the hurricane markets and Las Vegas, RevPAR in the remaining U.S. hotel markets rose 1.4% all on ADR growth.
Leaders in those remaining markets included Louisiana North (68.4%), driven by the construction of Meta’s $10 billion AI data center campus outside of Monroe. Besides Louisiana North, Texas North, and Texas East, 13 other markets saw double-digit RevPAR growth.
Group demand in luxury and upper-upscale hotels was unsurprisingly down 5.5% given the storm. Its decline peaked on Monday, down 12.9%, and slowly lessened throughout the week. As expected, major markets affected by the storm, including Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, and Washington DC saw large group declines.
All hotel types experienced declines in both RevPAR and demand this week. The winter storm altered the “K-Shape” trend in hotel performance for the week. Upper-upscale through upper-midscale hotels saw the largest impact on demand last week, accounting for 84% of demand decline combined. Luxury still had the lightest decline in RevPAR of just 0.5%, but economy and midscale hotels had the least amount of demand decline. Economy and midscale combined only accounted for 7% of the industry's decline, and economy hotels increased in occupancy year over year. This change in trends was driven by Fern markets, where midscale and economy hotels were this week’s class grouping. In Nashville, midscale and economy hotels were up 67.5% in RevPAR driven by a 59.6% increase in rooms sold.
Preliminary January results for US hotels
U.S. hotel RevPAR is expected to have increased 0.1% in January, it’s first gain in 10 months if it holds when final processing is completed in a few weeks. ADR continued to be rather weak, rising by just 0.4% in the month and below the 12-month average of 0.8%. Demand rose in 17 days of the month but ADR only surpassed the rate of inflation in four of those days. Of course, the last week of the month was affected by Winter Storm Fern. Through Jan. 24, RevPAR was up 1.3% with demand up a solid 1.5%. Before the storm and based on daily trends, we expected RevPAR to rise 1.1%.
Excluding hurricane markets (-17.7%) and Las Vegas (-4.4%), hotels in the remainder of the country saw decent RevPAR results (+1.6%) with the top 25 U.S. markets up 1.1% and all others rising 2.2%. Group demand was down among luxury and upper-upscale hotels. Luxury was the only hotel type to post positive RevPAR growth (+2.1%) as most other hotel classes were flat. Midscale and economy were down 2.2% and 5.1%, respectively.
Global hotel performance highlights
On a same-store and constant USD basis, global hotel RevPAR fell 1.4% in the week via declining ADR as occupancy advanced solidly. The shift in the Lunar New Year, which in 2025 began Jan. 29, affected hotel performance in China and across Asia. China’s RevPAR fell 18.2%, in Japan RevPAR dropped 13.8%, and in the rest of Asia RevPAR was down 9.4% as Chinese travelers stayed home. The year, the Lunar New Year is on Feb. 17.
Mexico was the only other country to see a decrease the week of Jan. 25-31 with RevPAR down 9.2%. The Mexican Caribbean (-18.2%) accounted for a large portion of the decline. The measure was also down in Baja California, Cancun, Mexico City and Pacific Central, driven by falling ADR.
The remaining countries/regions saw solid RevPAR growth ranging from 2.4% in Germany to 20.3% in Italy driven by robust gains in Milan (62.2%) ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics. Other countries/regions seeing double-digit hotel RevPAR gains are the Caribbean, France, Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC), and Latin America.
Global hotel occupancy rose to 69.5% from 68.9% a week ago and is up 4.4 percentage points. This was the second consecutive week of occupancy advancement. For the month, we expect occupancy to have risen 1.4 percentage points with flat ADR, driving a 2.3% RevPAR gain.
Isaac Collazo is senior director of analytics at STR. Cole Martin is an analytics and insights specialist at STR.