Love ruled the week of February 8-14 as U.S. hotel revenue per available room rose 4.6% on a 12.1% gain on Valentine’s Day. Excluding Valentine’s Day, RevPAR rose 2.7%.
Full-week occupancy rose 1.6 percentage points to 61.5%, its highest level since early November. And, for a third consecutive week, average daily rate increased, mirroring the previous week’s gain (+1.9%), although the growth was still below the rate of inflation. Besides Valentine’s Day, the week was also lifted by the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, and NBA All-Star weekend. As a result, more than half of all markets reported weekly RevPAR at or above 5% with a third having double-digit gains.
Valentine’s Day gave the U.S. hotel industry a 1.8-percentage-point RevPAR bump as a quarter of all hotels saw RevPAR advance by more than 20% that day. Saturday leaders included New Orleans (+93.3%), Los Angeles (+48.9%) and New York (+33.8%). All three benefited from other marquee events such as Mardi Gras (New Orleans), the NBA All-Star Weekend (Los Angeles) and Fashion Week (New York). Other markets seeing large double-digit Saturday RevPAR gains included Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Saint Louis and Seattle.
Overall, this was a very good Valentine’s Day as U.S. hotel occupancy reached 78.4%, the third-highest level since 2000, but below the Saturday Valentine’s average (80.3%). Since 2000, Valentine’s Day has only fallen on a Saturday three other times (2004, 2009 and 2015). Room demand did reach a new high at 4.4 million hotel rooms sold. On a working population per capita basis, room demand also was the third highest since 2000. However, Valentine’s Day ADR and RevPAR were the highest even when you adjust for inflation. All three KPIs (occupancy, ADR, RevPAR) were the best Saturday results since mid-October 2025. Luxury, upper-upscale, upscale, and upper-midscale hotels all saw Valentine’s Day occupancy top 80% with all classes seeing RevPAR gains above 10%. The lone exception was economy hotels, which had a RevPAR increase in the high single digits.
Super Bowl host markets San Francisco and San Jose, California, started off the week with a 492% combined increase in RevPAR on Sunday. Combined ADR surpassed $524 on game day, led by San Francisco’s $616 ADR. Occupancy came in at 80.8%, driven by San Jose’s occupancy of 82.6%. San Francisco hotel occupancy and ADR – when adjusted for inflation – were lower than in 2016, when the Super Bowl was last held in the Bay Area. It seems that Super Bowl travelers transitioned to the San Jose hotel market, which saw a 12-percentage-point increase in occupancy for the 2026 Super Bowl Sunday compared to 2016. San Jose’s hotel supply has grown 13% since 2016, compared to San Francisco’s hotel supply increasing 2%, allowing more options for fans to stay closer to Levi’s Stadium.
Last year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans was a stark contrast to this dispersion we saw this year. New Orleans’ hotel supply was less than one half of the Bay Area’s, and this compression resulted in an ADR of $815 and an occupancy of 93.6% for Super Bowl weekend. Given that, New Orleans saw a 20.3% decrease in weekly RevPAR. The measure was down 82.9% Sunday and Monday. It then increased by 17% Tuesday through Thursday before soaring over the weekend (82.5%) for the final Mardi Gras weekend.
The NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles led a 26.5% RevPAR increase for LA’s hotel market, driven by an 18.2% ADR gain and 5-percentage-point occupancy increase. The weekend saw the biggest lift with RevPAR increasing 42.8% and an occupancy reaching 91%. Luxury and upper-upscale hotels accounted for most of the demand increase. Note that San Francisco hosted the All-Star weekend last year. As a result, weekend RevPAR there was down 40.8% despite the Valentine’s Day shift.
Hurricane markets continued to be a drag on U.S. performance, down 8% in RevPAR this week. Without them, weekly RevPAR was up 5.4%.
On top of the transient demand increases for Valentine’s Day, hotel group demand also saw its largest increase of the year. Group demand was up 5.8% for the week with weekdays accounting for almost all the growth. Aforementioned events in Top 25 markets such as Los Angeles and New York saw the biggest increases in group demand, as well smaller increases in San Diego and Atlanta.
Lovely global RevPAR
Excluding the U.S., global hotel RevPAR on a same-store and constant U.S. dollar basis rose 11.1% during the week of Feb. 8-14, a growth level not seen since the beginning of the year. Favorable calendar shifts including Mardi Gras, Lunar New Year, and Valentine’s Day all contributed to the gain. Daily RevPAR grew by mid-double digits Sunday through Wednesday, pausing on a bit on Thursday (+9.1%) and Friday (+2.4%) before gaining strength on Saturday (+14%). Italy and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) together accounted for 3.6 percentage points of weekly RevPAR gain.
Same-store RevPAR in Italy rose 92% as the Winter Olympic Games continued in Milan and Cortina. Milano RevPAR surged 237.9% during the week on a 177.7% ADR gain to US$561. Hotel occupancy was also strong at 83.9%, up 14.9 percentage points. Mestre & Venice are also seeing strong RevPAR growth (+63.8%) as is Lombardy (+62.8%).
For a second consecutive week and for the third time this year, GCC same-store hotel RevPAR increased by more than 20%, up 24.8% this week. The growth was led by hotels in the United Arab Emirates, which were up 31.9%. The UAE makes up the largest number of GCC hotels. While Bahrain (+54.9%) and Oman (+35.4%) had higher RevPAR growth, their impact on the total GCC growth rate is limited.
China’s same-store RevPAR improved to 2.6% as the country celebrated the Lunar New Year and Spring Festival (Feb.15-23). ADR rose 15.2% and was the primary driver but occupancy was down 6.7 percentage points due to the holiday. The ADR gain was driven by resort markets including Jilin, Hainan Regional, and Yunnan. Hong Kong and Sanya were also contributors. Key markets such as Beijing and Shanghai were down by more than 13% because of the holiday.
Canada continued to see its same-store RevPAR advance with Valentine’s Day RevPAR up 11.3% versus an average of 3.5% on the remaining days. Most other countries also saw strong Valentine’s Day RevPAR growth except for Mexico, which was down 1.7% that day and 5.6% for the entire week.
Corrected on Feb. 20 to remove a mention of inflation-adjusted ADR in San Jose's hotel market in the fifth paragraph.
Isaac Collazo is senior director of analytics at STR. Cole Martin is an analytics and insights specialist at STR.