Broome County hotel occupancy rate more than doubles in May

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — Broome County hotels saw their biggest rebound in customers to date in May as they recover from the business disruptions of the COVID pandemic, according to a new report.

The hotel occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) in the county more than doubled (up 102 percent) to 54.1 percent in May, according to STR, a Tennessee–based hotel market data and analytics company. It was just the third monthly increase in occupancy in the county since January 2020, with all of them coming in the last three months.

Broome County’s revenue per available room (RevPar), a key industry gauge that measures how much money hotels are bringing in per available room, ratcheted up nearly 175 percent to $50.13 in May.

Average daily rate (or ADR), which represents the average rental rate for a sold room, jumped 35.9 percent to $92.64 in the county in the fifth month of the year. 

The strong May 2021 hotel-occupancy report follows the April and March results when occupancy rose 86.1 percent and 38.5 percent, respectively, from a year ago These are the first three months in which the year-over-year comparisons were to a month affected significantly by the COVID crisis. The last year of monthly reports showed significant declines in occupancy as the comparisons were to a pre-pandemic month.