Colorado Springs hotel occupancy cools in January

Jessica Van Dyne, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
·2 min read

Feb. 21—As Colorado Springs continued to see wintry weather so, too, did the city's hotel occupancy levels cool in January.

Colorado Springs hotel occupancy in January dipped year-over-year from 51.3% in 2022 to 50.2% this year, according to the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report.

Local hotel occupancy was also down 9.3% from 2019, an industry benchmark year before the pandemic.

The occupancy rate for January followed suit with December, which saw a 5.2% decrease. While the autumn months and some of late summer saw an uptick in hotel occupancy, winter has been a different story.

Doug Price, president and CEO of Visit Colorado Springs, told The Gazette via email that the occupancy rate was average for the month of January.

"Occupancy can fluctuate a few percentage points based on weather and gas prices," Price wrote.

The lodging report doesn't include The Broadmoor or Cheyenne Mountain Resort in its Colorado Springs numbers; those hotels are included in a separate category for resorts.

The average daily rate for Colorado Springs hotels in January rose 3.8% from $107.25 in 2022 to $111.37 this year — a slightly higher increase in rates than December, which also increased from the previous year.

"Hotels did a good job in maximizing room rates which were up nearly 4% on the rooms sold in January," Price wrote.

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Denver-area hotels outdid Colorado Springs with an occupancy rate of 55.5%, up 7.6% from a year earlier, ranking only behind Glenwood Springs at 65.1% and Greeley at 62.4%.

The average room rate for Denver-area hotels in January leapt to $128.14, up 9.5% from the year prior.

National hotel occupancy is projected to reach 63.8% in 2023, down 3.2% from pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to data from the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) and Oxford Economics.

"Hotels are making significant strides toward recovery," said AHLA President & CEO Chip Rogers, "supporting millions of good-paying jobs and generating billions in state and local tax revenue in communities across the nation."

Revenue from Colorado Springs' tax on hotel rooms and rental cars grew 1.49% from January 2022, totaling $513,245.

"Year ending December 2022, Lodging and Auto Rental Tax (LART) was up nearly 16% over 2021," Price wrote.

"This is great for the local economy where visitors spend more than $2.6 billion annually in our community."

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