Hotel owners see Thanksgiving surge

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The nation’s innkeepers had a good Thanksgiving –- at least compared with last year.

Both occupancy and average daily rates were up from last year, according to Smith Travel Research. Leading the way in growth were luxury hotels and such popular destinations as Chicago, San Francisco and New York.

The hospitality industry measures success in terms of revenue per available room -- RevPAR, they call it -- by multiplying a hotel’s occupancy rate by its average daily room rate. That key gauge was up more than 10% from last year. For luxury lodging and what the industry considers “upper-upscale” hotels, RevPAR rose nearly 13%.

Hotel occupancy tanked in the fall of 2008 and has been weak ever since, according to an analysis by FBR Capital Markets released Thursday.

“More recently, however, both weekday and weekend occupancies have shown improvement, with the trend lines trending upward nearly across all” types of hotel chains, FBR said. “To us, upward sloping trend lines continue to signal a recovery.”

Average daily room rates continue to be depressed, but rose an average of 3% for Thanksgiving week compared with a year ago.

-- Roger Vincent