Conferences, events fuel US hotel demand as calendar flips to October

For a fifth consecutive week, U.S. hotel revenue per available room was down (-0.4%), but the decline during Sept. 28 to Oct. 4 was the smallest during that stretch. Hotel occupancy continued to fall as it has for the past 15 consecutive weeks, but average daily rate grew 2.7%, the highest rate of the past 23 weeks.

By day, ADR soared on Sunday (+4.9%) and Monday (+4.9%). The gain was led by the top 25 U.S. hotel markets with an average increase of 8.6% on those two days and strong growth continuing into Tuesday (+5.0%). A closer look revealed that six markets drove the extraordinary ADR gains: Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York City and San Francisco. On those three days, top 25 market ADR was up 7.3%, but if you exclude those six, ADR in the remaining top 25 markets was down 1.5% and barely up in all other markets (+0.8%). Thus, the ADR increase does not signal a change in trend. It was more of an anomaly.

Las Vegas hotels saw the highest ADR increase among the six markets, with rates rising by more than 49.5% Sunday through Tuesday as the Pack EXPO welcomed 30,000 attendees and 20,000 exhibitor personnel to the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Chicago’s ADR increase was not far behind Las Vegas, increasing 23.1% on those three days due to WEFTEC 2025, the largest annual water quality event in North America. Plus, McCormick Place also hosted several other large conventions during those days.

While Chicago’s ADR and RevPAR were strong like the other markets mentioned, excluding Las Vegas, U.S. weekly RevPAR would be down 2.2% and similar to the previous week with ADR rising 1.2% but still below the rate of inflation.

Among the top 25 U.S. hotel markets, full-week RevPAR growth was highest in Las Vegas (+49%) and Chicago (+19.1%). Six markets, however, saw double-digit declines, including Atlanta, Houston, and Tampa.

Tampa hotels saw RevPAR decrease 35% on falling demand because of the difficult comps created by Hurricane Helene in 2024. In total, 17 of the top 25 markets saw flat to decreasing RevPAR last week.

Outside of the top 25, most of the U.S. hotel markets seeing large RevPAR decreases were those that saw large gains a year ago due to Hurricane Helene: Columbia, Georgia South, Sarasota, Savannah, Greenville/Spartanburg, and eight others we identified last year where RevPAR was down an average of 24% on declining occupancy (-23.6 percentage points). Excluding those 13 markets, U.S. weekly hotel RevPAR was up 0.9% on rising ADR. However, if you also exclude Las Vegas, RevPAR was down 0.9% on declining hotel occupancy, which underscores the continued weakness across the U.S.

As we have seen since the start of football season, several hotel markets saw strong RevPAR growth driven mostly by weekend ADR gains. Markets in this group included Michigan South, Alabama North, and Indiana North, where weekend ADR rose more than 60%. In total, U.S. weekend ADR was up 2.6% with equal gains in both the top 25 and all other markets.

Yom Kippur also occurred during the week of Sept. 28 to Oct. 4 on Wednesday and Thursday. The impact was noticeable in demand change within the Top 25 Markets, where the measure fell 3% on Wednesday and 4.4% on Thursday. The impact of this year’s Yom Kippur was somewhat offset since in 2024 Rosh Hashanah was observed on Wednesday, Oct. 2 to Friday, Oct. 3.

With strong convention activity in key markets such as Las Vegas, it shouldn’t be a surprise that luxury hotel RevPAR increased 8.2% on ADR (+7.9%). Economy RevPAR dropped 6.5% on decreasing occupancy. Upper upscale (-0.1%) and upscale (-1.4%) saw the smallest declines of all hotel types.

While we know that Las Vegas, Chicago and a few other hotel markets saw strong group demand, total U.S. group demand among luxury and upper-upscale hotels was down 2.9% while ADR was up 7.1% due to Las Vegas.

Preliminary data shows that September U.S. hotel RevPAR fell 2.4%. If that result holds, it would be the largest monthly decline – excluding the pandemic period from March 2020 to February 2021 – since the end of the Great Recession in February 2010. The decrease was due to falling occupancy, which has decreased for seven consecutive months. ADR is also expected to have decreased (-0.3%), which would be the second monthly decline since the end of the pandemic, both of which have occurred in the last quarter.

While U.S. hotel RevPAR improved from the previous week, underlying weakness remains. It was encouraging to see strong group performance in Chicago and Las Vegas hotels, but the growth appears to be more of an outlier versus a change in trend. That said, we do expect October to be better than what we witnessed in September given a relatively clean calendar and the movement of Halloween to a Friday.

Same-store global RevPAR, excluding hotels in the U.S, rose 9.9% on ADR as occupancy was flat. Germany, France, Spain and several other countries and regions saw double-digit RevPAR and ADR growth.

Countries and regions with hotel RevPAR declines included China (-6.5%) and the Caribbean (-8.7%). China’s decrease was occupancy-driven due to the Mid-Autumn Festival and Golden Week (Oct. 1-8). The Caribbean saw a decline in both occupancy and ADR with the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, and others down significantly, likely due in part to Hurricane Imelda.

Mexico saw same-store hotel RevPAR rise 5.1% with Canada up 3.9%. Most Mexican markets saw RevPAR rise with the most notable exception being Mexico City (-9.3%). In Canada, Nova Scotia saw the largest increase (+21.7%) with the Niagara region posting the worst decrease (-11.3%).

Isaac Collazo is senior director of analytics at STR.

This article represents an interpretation of data collected by CoStar's hospitality analytics firm, STR. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concerns. For more analysis of STR data, visit the data insights blog on STR.com.

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