Published on : Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Kauaʻi saw largest occupancy declines – a 9.5 per cent drop to 74.9 per cent. Hotel occupancy in Maui County dropped 5.1 per cent to 75.3 percent, and Oʻahu’s by 0.7 per cent to 82.6 per cent. Hotel occupancy of Hawaiʻi Island, fell by 7 per cent.
Some visitor industry leaders blame the popularity of vacation rentals for the decrease of hotel occupancy. But Jan Freitag, Senior Vice President of STR, says it’s difficult to tell the effect of the rentals on hotels.
Freitag opines that the dip in hotel occupancy for January is not a major concern as a 79 per cent occupancy rate is ‘still very, very high.’
He said: “If you’re looking at the occupancy in 2015, you know, year-end is 78.8%. In 2016, 79.3 percent. 2017, 80.3 percent. And then last year, 2018, 79.9 percent.”
The occupancy hasn’t really moved at all. The impact of AirBnB is really hard to say. There were no new rooms added to the state’s inventory which could be one of the factor’s for decline in room demand.
Tags: hawai, hotel occupancy