I think of January and February as the warm up of the year — very ironic, since they are usually the coldest months. With March kicking the year into full gear next week, I wanted to take a second to see if the industry's vitals are truly ready for peak performance.
Alright, I'll quit the fitness metaphors just as everyone probably already quit their fitness goals for the new year.
The thing I wanted to look at to see if the industry is on track is the much-buzzed about calendar and holiday shifts for the year. This is something I heard a lot about in the early weeks of January — from hoteliers, data experts and my fellow reporters.
Essentially, the hotel industry has a best-case-scenario situation with how the 2026 calendar shakes out. Since months start and end on different days each year, monthly year-over-year comparisons can yield a bit of a bias. But this year, more months out of the year benefit from the changes, netting a positive for hoteliers tracking the performance of their portfolios as well as for the industry as a whole.
The days in which holidays fall can also be a boon to travel and therefore hotel bookings. My colleague Brannan Doyle, research analyst with STR's Market Insights team, wrote extensively about what to expect from these shifts in 2026.
The year's first big example of a positive holiday shift was Valentine's Day. Not only did it fall on a Saturday — making a weekend away for lovebirds possible without having to dip into paid time off — but it fell on a Saturday during President's Day weekend, a Monday bank holiday that provides a three-day weekend to many.
At the Americas Lodging Investment Summit in January, I sat down with Isaac Collazo, senior director of analytics at STR, to talk to him about some of his performance expectations for the year, and we briefly discussed in a video and podcast interview how these shifts will affect performance.
With that first holiday weekend in the rearview, I wanted to follow up with Isaac to see if the performance met his expectations. In short, yes they did.
Isaac predicted that hotel occupancy for Valentine's Day would be 78%, and STR data reported 78.4% occupancy for Feb. 14. It's exactly what Isaac was expecting, but still a bit below the average occupancy of Saturday Valentine's Day, which is 80.3%.
As nuanced of a stats tool tracking these holiday and calendar shifts can be, it is interesting to see the bump in business meet expectations. I guess only time will tell if these other shifts deliver in the same way. The next holiday shift is Juneteeth, which falls on a Friday this year and provides an early summer three-day weekend for travelers.
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