U.S. hotels had more guests on Memorial Day weekend than any other time during the pandemic, with 40% of all hotels reporting occupancy of 90% or more, and those guests paid more for rooms than they did on the 2019 holiday weekend.

The latest Market Recovery Monitor data from STR, CoStar’s hospitality analytics company, shows that U.S. hotel revenue per available room on Memorial Day weekend was 104% on the 2019 holiday weekend. The RevPAR for Memorial Day weekend this year was $ 114. compared to $ 110 in 2019.

The average daily rate on Memorial Day weekend was 10.2% higher than the previous weekend and higher than the 2019 holiday weekend. For the entire week, ADR was at its highest level since the pandemic began, up 5.4% from the previous week – the largest week-to-week increase in the last 10 weeks. In the US top 25 markets, ADR gains were even better, up 4% weekly – the largest weekly increase since early April.

However, for the entire week ending May 29, the RevPAR was still only 77% of the 2019 Holiday Week value, suggesting that weekday business for hotels remains weak as business travel and group bookings continue to lag behind.

The weekly RevPAR across the U.S. hotel industry was still the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic began, at $ 75.

The Market Recovery Monitor, which uses the RevPAR index to classify the US hotel markets into one of four categories up to 2019, shows 60% of all markets in “recovery” (RevPAR between 80% and 100% of the 2019 level) or “peak” (RevPAR above 2019 level).

Three Florida markets – the Florida Keys, Sarasota, and Daytona Beach – had the highest RevPAR index through 2019 for the week. San Francisco, New York, and Boston had the lowest index through 2019.


The US hotel occupancy for the week reached 61.8%, the highest level since February 2020. Taking into account the temporarily closed hotel rooms, the total occupancy of the room inventory was 59.2%.

The first two days of Memorial Day weekend the occupancy was over 78.3%, the highest weekend occupancy since October 2019. The weekend accounted for almost all of the week-to-week increase in occupancy, as the occupancy was on weekdays compared to The previous week remained unchanged. The biggest jump in occupancy from week to week was on Saturday when occupancy across the US hotel industry was 83%.

Half of all US markets had occupancy rates of 60% or more that week. Only 17 stores reported under 50% occupancy per week, up from 47 stores (a third of all US stores) in that area the previous week. Hotels in six of the top 25 markets saw less than 50% occupancy this week, including San Francisco, New York, and Washington, DC

There were 1,500 hotels in the industry with occupancy below 30% a week, but that’s the lowest number since the pandemic began.

At the store level, 77% of all US stores had over 70% occupancy over the holiday weekend and 30% of stores had over 80% occupancy. Only one store, New York, had an occupancy rate below 50%.

Hotels with 300 or more rooms struggling with a lack of business and group travel continued to gain ground with weekly occupancy of 48%. These hotels achieved an occupancy rate of 70% over the holiday weekend. Granted, there are still a large number of large hotels that remain closed, which is likely to add to the occupancy of the hotels that are open.

Isaac Collazo is VP Analytics at STR.

This article presents an interpretation of the data collected by CoStar’s hospitality analytics company STR. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact an editor. For further analysis of STR data, Visit the Data Insights blog on STR.com.