Jefferson County hotel-occupancy rate jumps almost 24 percent

WATERTOWN, N.Y. — Hotels in Jefferson County were substantially fuller in October than in the year-ago month, continuing the lodging industry’s recovery from the pandemic, according to a recent report.

The hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) in the county rose 23.7 percent to 56.7 percent this October, according to STR, a Tennessee–based hotel market data and analytics company. Year to date, hotel occupancy was up nearly 37 percent to 52 percent.

Revenue per available room (RevPar), a key industry gauge that measures how much money hotels are bringing in per available room, soared 46.6 percent to $60.17 in October compared to a year prior. Through the first 10 months of the year, RevPar increased more than 55 percent to $54.40 compared to the same period last year.

Average daily rate (or ADR), which represents the average rental rate for a sold room, rose 18.5 percent to $106.14 in October from October 2020. ADR was up more than 13 percent to $104.65, year to date through October.

This was the eighth-consecutive strong monthly hotel-occupancy report for Jefferson County. These are the first eight months in which the year-over-year comparisons were to a month affected significantly by the COVID crisis. The 12 reports before that each featured double-digit declines in occupancy as the comparisons were to a pre-pandemic month.