Jefferson County hotels register 13 percent decline in guests in December

WATERTOWN — Jefferson County hotels posted a more than 13 percent drop in overnight guests in December, as two other indicators of hotel-business performance were mixed. The hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) in the county fell 13.3 percent to 36.2 percent in the last month of 2023 from December 2022, according to STR, a Tennessee–based hotel market data and analytics company. For all of 2023, occupancy was down 7 percent to 51.7 percent. Revenue per available room (RevPar), a key industry gauge that measures how much money hotels are bringing in per available room, declined 13 percent in Jefferson County to $36.96 in December, compared to the year-ago month. For the full year, RevPar was off 2.8 percent to $59.86. Bucking the trend, average daily rate (ADR), which represents the average rental rate for a sold room, edged up 0.4 percent to $102.01 in December from the same month in 2022. For all 12 months of 2023, ADR was up 4.5 percent to $115.73.