Every autumn, Salem, Massachusetts, sees a spellbinding influx of tourists swooping into the area to experience its rich history, New England small town charm, fall foliage and bewitching culture.
"There is nothing like being in Salem in October," said Joe Keefe, area general manager at Lark Hotels, which owns and manages hotels in and around Salem.
But the magic of Salem's peak season — much like most of the country's — has been slightly cursed this year, with midweek drops in occupancy and shorter stays. The commonwealth of Massachusetts also continues to see a rise in short-term rental inventory competing with hotel bookings in the already constrained travel climate.
Creating a magical, immersive experience
Salem is a go-to destination for autumn, and, according to Destination Salem, the town saw over a million visitors in October 2024. This year, Keefe says the market should see a similar number.
"When we get to the heart of October, it's kind of a bit like Disneyland for four weeks, because it's just that many people all convening on in a small space in a short period of time," said Keefe.
Just a 30-minute train ride from Boston, Salem sees the bulk of its visitors between April and November, Keefe said, with the annual autumnal pop beginning in the middle of September and tapering off after the second week of November.
Megan Campbell, area general manager of The Merchant, has spent her entire 20-year hospitality career in Salem. She said that despite the season's focus on "a really terrible event in history" — the 1692 Salem Witch Trials — the town has made it something inclusive and special.
"Salem, at this point, is a really welcoming, inclusive, open city that embraces everyone, and this is that time of year where we really get to celebrate that through costumes, through all the stuff that goes on throughout the streets," she said.
While experiences like touring the McIntire Historic District's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manors and visiting the local museums, namely the Salem Witch Museum, are available year round, the town also hosts events and programming throughout the season.
It's also a "see and be seen" kind of scene, she said, as visitors dress up and patronize restaurants and businesses all through town. With only 11 rooms right in the center of town, The Merchant speaks to these types of visitors with its history and grandeur.
"Guests who are traveling here, who are staying with us, are all looking for a fairly immersive experience. The architecture of the area and of the building itself was finished in 1789. It was built for a Revolutionary War veteran, Joshua Ward, who had a number of ships in the East India Trade — so, built on the money generated from rum, molasses, spices and all of that," she said. "And, given that Salem was at that point the wealthiest port in the country, you really kind of feel that when you're here."
The Salem area — including nearby towns Peabody, Marblehead and Beverly — has 19 hotels with over 1,300 rooms, according to CoStar data, which gives visitors options for locations as well as chain scales.
"If you're traveling to Salem, you really have your pick of places to stay for a town with a population of about 45,000 people year round," Campbell said.
Lark Hotels owns and/or operates three hotels in Salem proper — The Merchant, The Hotel Salem and The Cove — but also has a few other portfolio properties in the surrounding areas. Keefe said the centrally-located hotels tend to book up first, but nearby towns will also fill up with Salem travelers too.
A cursed year for travel
Even though Salem's total visitor data isn't expected to drastically underperform this year, hotels in Salem are feeling the same pinch the rest of the country is feeling due to consumers rethinking how they are spending.
"People are being a little more frugal with how they're spending their money," Keefe said. "And what we're seeing is people are maybe coming in and spending the day, whereas they may have stayed a night or two previously."
This has affected mid-week performance in particular and has been occurring since this summer, Keefe said. Weekends in the fall have still been performing well, essentially selling out in Salem and surrounding areas.
"The town's still busy, but we're seeing the way people are spending money is a little bit different now, little less splurging, a little more sort of like, 'I have these three or four things I really want to do, and that's what I'm going to spend my money on,'" Keefe said.
For most, visiting Salem in the fall is a bucket list trip, not an annual vacation, so October bookings open in December for The Merchant. People plan in advance, maybe making changes closer to their stays, Campbell said.
"This year has been hard. We've seen a downtick in travel, which is something we've seen industry wide, and I think particularly over the summer — business that we usually tend to expect to see coming, just didn't materialize," she said.
According to Didio Pequeno, director of hospitality market analytics in the Northeast and Midwestern regions at CoStar, the Andover/Danvers Northeast submarket, which includes Salem and a large region north of Boston, has reported overall occupancy is down so far this year.
"When I look at year-to-date performance through Oct.18 looking at the weekends, 2024 weekend occupancy was 79.9%. That's gone down to 77.8%, so down 2.1%. That's a pretty sizable drop, and that lets you know that that's really tied to leisure demand," he said.
Weekday performance is marginally worse, which falls in line with what Keefe has experienced. Year-to-date occupancy in 2024 was 70.5%, and through the same time frame in 2025, it's down to 66.9%, according to CoStar data. That's a 3.6% drop tied to business transient demand.
"That downturn that they're seeing — it's not unique to Salem, it's not unique to that sub market. We're seeing the same thing all around the country," Pequeno said, adding that, much like the rest of the country, hotels are still able to drive rate.
Pequeno said the data shows the submarket's performance is getting progressively worse as the year goes on, even despite Salem's busy fall season. When zooming in on upper-upscale and luxury properties in the Andover/Danvers Northeast submarket, the region has seen a 1.7% increase in revenue per available room.
"That leads me to believe that because Salem has a higher percent concentration of rooms in the higher end category, Salem is probably doing better than most of the rest of the sub market," Pequeno said.
Inventory for Salem has been stagnant the past few years, according to CoStar data, and the latest hotel to open was the Hampton by Hilton Salem Boston, which opened in 2020. The new AC Hotel Salem in final planning stages with a planned opening in 2028.
Campbell said while it might make sense to drop rate to get people in, her focus has been on providing the top experience for the guests who are coming in.
"We really focused on honing in on the hospitality, honing in on the processes that we have in place that really are that hospitality, to make sure that experiences are flawless," she said.
The Merchant, which doesn't have an on-property restaurant or bar, instead provides treats and experiences like homemade caramel triple fudge brownies at check-in or afternoon cider stations. Campbell said she also looks for opportunities through booking reservations, emails or texts from guests to elevate experiences.
"Every year, we try to build on a little bit, elevate the product that we're offering, whether it's coming up with a fun, complimentary gift bag that has unusual things in it, going a little bit crazier with decor, just trying to figure out ways to delight people," she said. "It comes more holistically from the team and kind of our vision of hospitality."
Short-term rental impact
For the first half of the year, Massachusetts has reported flat lodging rooms booked year over year, according to an August report from the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism based on STR and AirDNA data. Hotel and short-term rental occupancy was down slightly statewide, declining 1.6% and 1.3% respectively. But while hotel supply remained flat, short-term rental supply increased by 10.8%.
The state's rental market is parallel to what Salem is seeing. As of Sept. 1, short-term rental listings were up 10% year over year in Salem, and supply has been outpacing demand growth, which pushes occupancy levels down, said Jamie Lane, senior vice president of analytics and chief economist at AirDNA.
According to the AirDNA data, rental occupancy has declined year over year every month since February. This decline is similar to what hotels in the area are experiencing. Last October, Salem's short-term rental market had around 84% occupancy — it's highest monthly occupancy for the year. Rentals, per the data, are also still pushing rate despite the decline in occupancy and essentially flat RevPAR.
Conjuring year-round visitors
If there's one thing hoteliers want travelers to know about Salem, it's that the town is rich in history and experiences year round.
"The Salem market is not just the fall, and it's certainly not just Halloween," Keefe said. "There's a wealth of other things to do and see in Salem 12 months a year, but especially spring, summer, and both ends of the fall in September and November as well. ... I think a lot of people think, Salem — witches, Halloween, "Hocus Pocus," all that fun stuff — but there's a lot more to it than that."
Spring in Salem — depending on the weather — can be lovely, but there's nothing like the town with a light dusting of snow in the winter, Campbell said. Salem's tourism groups are also introducing new events outside of peak season to bring in tourism, like the annual So Sweet Chocolate & Ice Sculpture Festival in February.
"There's so much focus on October. It's really hard to not have that be a primary focus," Campbell said. "But I think one of the things I've seen, especially over the past year or two, is that the people in charge of [bringing more] people into Salem are looking out at those different times of years."