Orlando, San Francisco lead hotel recovery
Some U.S. cities are showing signs of an ongoing hotel recovery in 2011, including Orlando, which averaged an 80.6 percent occupancy rate in March, a number that hasn’t been reached in three years. “Even in our best times, it’s tough to get 80 percent,” Scott Smith, a lodging instructor in the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management, told the Orlando Sentinel. March is typically a good month for travel and tourism and Central Florida.
Recovery is on the upswing in other regions as well. On the West Coast, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Anaheim, Calif., all showed significant room revenue increases compared to last year, according to Smith Travel Research. San Francisco was one of four cities to see revenue per available room increases of more than 15 percent in the first quarter. Other cities reporting higher revenues are Dallas, Oahu Island, Hawaii, and Detroit. “The industry’s upward momentum continued in the first three months of 2011 with the strongest quarterly RevPAR growth since first-quarter 2006,” said Bobby Bowers, senior vice president at STR.
