Onondaga County hotel occupancy jumps almost 53 percent in December

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Onondaga County hotels continued to see a strong business rebound in December with occupancy increasing by more than half compared to the same month in 2020, according to a new report.

The hotel-occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) in the county climbed 52.9 percent to 41.2 percent in December from the year-ago month, according to STR, a Tennessee–based hotel market data and analytics company. It was the 10th straight month of big gains in occupancy, each topping 38 percent. These are the first 10 months in which the year-over-year comparisons were to a month hindered by the COVID crisis. The last year of monthly reports before that showed significant declines in occupancy as the comparisons were to a pre-pandemic month. For all of 2021, occupancy rose 44 percent to 50.2 percent.

Revenue per available room (RevPar), a key industry gauge that measures how much money hotels are bringing in per available room, rocketed higher by 93.8 percent to $38.74 in Onondaga County this December from a year earlier. For the full year, RevPar increased more than 74 percent to $50.44. 

Average daily rate (or ADR), which represents the average rental rate for a sold room, rose 26.8 percent to $93.96 in December compared to December 2020. ADR went up 21 percent to $100.40 for the entire year.