Area Hotels Post Another Monthly Improvement

For the first three quarters of the year, the overall occupancy rate is 64.1%, compared with 61.9% in the first nine months of 2003. However, the average room rate through September continues to lag the first nine months of 2003. The average room rate in the first nine months is $83.46, compared with $84.39 in the same time period last year.

The study shows that Downtown has by far the highest average room rate at $123.57. It also has one of the highest average occupancy rates in the metro area at 72.2%. Indeed, the Denver international Airport market has the highest occupancy rate at 73.2%, but the Downtown market is almost three times the size with a total of 156,501 available hotel room nights, compared with 54,211 room night near DIA. The average room rate for DIA hotels is $82.09.

Besides Downtown, the only other submarket to break $100 per nightaverage room rate is Boulder, at $100.98. The average occupancy rate in Boulder is 70.5%.

The only market with more rooms than Downtown are the South andSoutheast markets, which Benton breaks into four submarkets. Together, they have 259,632 rooms and 161,937 of them--slightly more than the equivalent of all Downtown rooms--were occupied in September, for an overall occupancy rate of 62.4%. The average room rate for what Benton calls "Level I" and "Level II" room along the Southeast corridor is $77.02. Level I, or class-A properties show an overall occupancy rate of 68.1% and an average room rate of $85.31. Level II, or class-B properties, trail in not only in average room rates, which would be expected, at an average room rate of $54.04, but it also had a higher occupancy rate than the Level II properties at 68.1%.