WATERTOWN — Hotels in Jefferson County saw another large influx in guests in May compared to a year prior, as the travel and leisure business recovers from the pandemic’s disruptions, according to a recent report.
The hotel occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) in the county more than doubled (up 114.5 percent) to 49.2 percent in May, according to STR, a Tennessee–based hotel market data and analytics company.
Revenue per available room (RevPar), a key industry gauge that measures how much money hotels are bringing in per available room, climbed 158.5 percent to $44.57 in the fifth month of the year compared to May 2020.
Average daily rate (or ADR), which represents the average rental rate for a sold room, rose 20.5 percent to $90.65 in May from the year-ago month.
The strong May 2021 hotel-occupancy report follows Jefferson County’s nearly 158 percent jump in occupancy in April and 49 percent rise in March. These are the first three months in which the year-over-year comparisons are to a month affected significantly by the COVID crisis. The prior 12 reports each featured double-digit declines in occupancy as the comparisons were to a pre-pandemic month.