HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee—Perhaps everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, but only some hotel markets see more green, STR research shows.
STR, parent company of Hotel News Now, completed an analysis of national and selected market performance on and around the St. Patrick’s Day holiday over a 15-year period (from 2004 to 2018). While on a national basis, there does not appear not any major or consistent lift in indicators for the holiday, the city of Savannah, Georgia, shows sizable room gains.
Hoteliers in Savannah should expect to find a pot of gold over the St. Patrick’s Day holiday weekend. Savannah, which will be celebrating its 195th St. Patrick’s Day parade this Saturday, has seen its weekend indicators outpace weekday lift during the holiday, with last year’s Saturday night average daily rate gains 74.7% and revenue per available room gains 77.8% above normal. We have to go back at least 10 years in Savannah to see an unlucky period performance—a year in which intense storms caused area blackouts and forced an early close of festivities.
But not every market has had the same run of luck for the holiday. Boston may have the longest-running parade (going back to 1737), but the Boston CBD’s Saturday RevPAR was down last year by 31.6% compared to surrounding Saturdays. In fact, the CBD’s RevPAR performance on past St. Patrick’s Days has underperformed during eight of the last 15 years examined (using holiday same-day-of-week comparison against week before and after performance).
M. Brian Riley is a research analyst with STR’s Market Insights division.
This article represents an interpretation of data collected by STR, parent company of HNN. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.