Statewide Hotel Occupancies Increase

And unlike the Denver-area hotels, which showed a slight decrease in average room rates, statewide they actually rose slightly to $97.96. Bob Benton, principal of Robert S. Benton & Associates, the author of the report, says that is because the hotels outside of Denver for the most part aren't depending on business travelers, but rather draw mostly leisure travelers.

Year-to-date, the average occupancy rate for hotels statewide stands at 58.9%, compared with 57.4% in the first seven months of 2003. So far this year, only two months – February and May – have not outperformed the same month in 2003. Year-to-date, the average room rate is $97.82, compared with $97.07 in the first seven months of 2003. As with the occupancy rates, the average room rates on an individual month basis have only failed to best last year's tally twice. In May and June, hotel room rates statewide were lower than in 2003.

The rate race was won by Aspen, which had a whopping $313.16 average room rate, almost twice the next highest of $169.11 for the "other" category in the report. That category would include hotels in Telluride, Crested Butte, Keystone and Copper Mountain. Vail hotels had an overall average room rate $147.12. Aspen also had a high average occupancy rate at 76.1%, compared to 58.5% in Vail.

In Colorado Springs, the second largest city in the state, Level I or class-A hotels had an average occupancy rate of 84.2% and an average room rate of $91.19. The second-tier hotels in Colorado Springs had an average occupancy of 77.7% and an average room rate of $66.34.

The highest occupancy rate in July, statewide, was found in Durango, in the southwest part of Colorado. There, the average occupancy rate was at 88.9% and the average room rate at $100.07.

Overall, there are 1.59 million room nights available throughout Colorado, and 1.17 million of them were filed in July.