by Calculated Risk on 11/06/2025 11:45:00 AM
SPECIAL NOTE on Government Shutdown and Air Travel from CoStar:
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the government would cut 10% of air traffic at 40 of the country’s busiest airports if the shutdown continues, the New York Times reports. The airports will be named later today.
…
The announcement comes just weeks before Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving. AAA’s latest forecast predicts 2.4 million planned to travel by air for the holiday. Last year, TSA screened more than 3 million passengers, a new record, during last year’s Thanksgiving week.
If the cuts happen, this will likely negatively impact hotel occupancy rates.
Hotel occupancy was weak over the summer months, due to less international tourism. The fall months are mostly domestic travel and occupancy is still under pressure!
The U.S. hotel industry reported mixed year-over-year comparisons, according to CoStar’s latest data through 1 November. …
26 October through 1 November 2025 (percentage change from comparable week in 2024):
• Occupancy: 59.3% (-2.6%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): US$156.09 (+0.4%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$92.54 (-2.3%)
emphasis added
The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average.
Click on graph for larger image.The red line is for 2025, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2024. Dashed black is for 2018, the record year for hotel occupancy.
The 4-week average of the occupancy rate is tracking behind both last year and the median rate for the period 2000 through 2024 (Blue).
Note: Y-axis doesn’t start at zero to better show the seasonal change.
The 4-week average will decrease seasonally until early next year.
On a year-to-date basis, the only worse years for occupancy over the last 25 years were pandemic or recession years.
