Oneida County’s hotel occupancy soars nearly 53 percent

UTICA, N.Y. — Oneida County’s hotels attracted a large increase in guests in December compared to a year prior as they continued to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.

The county’s hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) jumped 52.6 percent to 43.7 percent in December from the year-ago month. That’s according to a new report from STR, a Tennessee–based hotel market data and analytics company. For the full 2021 year, occupancy rose 33.8 percent to 54.9 percent.

Revenue per available room (RevPar), a key industry gauge that measures how much money hotels are bringing in per available room, rocketed up 82.2 percent to $49.63 in last year’s final month, compared to December 2020. RevPar was up 52.2 percent for the entire 2021 year to $64.26.

Average daily rate (or ADR), which represents the average rental rate for a sold room, increased 19.4 percent to $113.52 in Oneida County in December. For the whole year, ADR went up 13.7 percent to $117.16.

The robust December 2021 hotel-occupancy report marks the 10th consecutive month of significant increases in occupancy in the Mohawk Valley’s most-populated county, compared to the year-earlier month. These are the first 10 months in which the year-over-year comparisons were to a month affected substantially by the COVID crisis. The prior year of monthly reports before that showed large declines in occupancy as the comparisons were to a pre-pandemic month.