Jefferson County hotels see 68 percent increase in occupancy in December

WATERTOWN, N.Y. — Hotels in Jefferson County saw a flood of guests in December compared to the year-prior month, continuing the lodging industry’s bounce back from the pandemic, according to a new report.

The hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) in the county climbed 68.4 percent to 41.3 percent in December, according to STR, a Tennessee–based hotel market data and analytics company. For all of 2021, hotel occupancy gained 39 percent to 50.7 percent.

Revenue per available room (RevPar), a key industry gauge that measures how much money hotels are bringing in per available room, leaped 86.4 percent to $39.38 in December compared to a year ago. For the full year, RevPar increased 57.1 percent to $52.35.

Average daily rate (or ADR), which represents the average rental rate for a sold room, rose 10.7 percent to $95.45 in December from the same month in 2020. ADR was up 13 percent to $103.26 for the entire 2021 year.

This was the 10th consecutive strong monthly hotel-occupancy report for Jefferson County. These are the first 10 months in which the year-over-year comparisons were to a month hampered significantly by the COVID pandemic. The 12 reports before that each featured double-digit declines in occupancy as the comparisons were to a pre-pandemic month.