Did Hawaii hotels reopen too soon? Here’s a real look at Hawaii hotel supply & demand.
Like other interested parties, we track the STR hotel occupancy and rate data published by the HTA. As Erik Kloninger reports below, the real demand for Hawaii hotels is actually worse than what's been reported because the published figures do not take into account the rooms taken out of the market because of hotels shutting down or renovating through the pandemic.
From July to December 2020, hotel occupancy in the state ranged between about 20% and 24%. These statistics are somewhat misleading because they are based only on rooms that were available to rent; much of the state’s room inventory was not available to rent because many hotels had suspended operations. For example, in July 2020 hotel occupancy was about 21%, meaning 21% of the available rooms were occupied. If calculated based on the pre-COVID supply, occupancy would have been 11% in July.
The chart below shows Hawaii hotel room supply and demand during the second half of 2020. Many of the state’s hotels temporarily closed as a result of COVID-19 and resulting travel restrictions. In September, 57% of the pre-COVID room supply was in operation. Following the implementation of the Safe Travels Hawaii program in mid-October, more hotels reopened. In November 86% of pre-COVID supply was open and by December 93% of hotel rooms in the state were available for guests. Some of the missing supply was in properties that are closed for renovation, such as the Halekulani, or in large properties such as the Hilton Hawaiian Village that reopened only a portion of their towers.
