Australia’s recent hotel performance represents normalization as leisure demand has peaked and given way to strengthening in corporate business, according to CoStar and STR analysis that will be presented this week at NoVacancy Hotel + Accommodation Industry Expo.CoStar is a leading provider of online real estate marketplaces, information and analytics in the property markets. STR is CoStar’s provider of data benchmarking, analytics, and marketplace insights for the global hospitality industry.Australia’s occupancy through the first seven months of the year was 68.2%, which was up 9.8% from last year but down 6.0% from 2019. Average daily rate (ADR) of AUD234.46 was 7.4% higher than last year and 22.4% better than 2019. Driven by gains in ADR, revenue per available room (RevPAR) has been indexing at 120 (20 percentage higher) or better than 2019 since April 2022. “Australia is following many other countries into a period of normalization,” said Matthew Burke, STR’s regional director for the Pacific region, Central South Asia and Japan. “That is happening because the surge in domestic leisure travel peaked in 2022, and while room prices are considerably higher than 2019, we’ve seen minimal-to-no rate growth year over year. That isn’t a loss, but more of a shift, as we’ve seen gains in capital cities and on the days most associated with corporate demand.”