STR Weekly Insights: 16-29 November 2025

All financial figures in U.S. dollar constant currency.

Highlights

• U.S. RevPAR decrease all due to hurricane markets
• Fortnight U.S. occupancy flat, ADR up, excluding hurricane markets
• Thanksgiving Day room demand second highest ever
• Global RevPAR up strongly

U.S. performance improves, but comps still impacted by hurricane markets

In the two weeks ending 29 November 2025, U.S. revenue per available room (RevPAR) decreased 0.3% on falling occupancy (-0.7 percentage points) and a 0.9% rise in average daily rate (ADR).

Since the end of April, room demand has fallen in 21 of 31 weeks while occupancy has dipped in 28 weeks. Slowly increasing supply has negated some of the demand growth during this period, but in the two most recent weeks, supply gains abated a bit.

In the week before the Thanksgiving holiday (ending 22 November), RevPAR was flat. During the week of Thanksgiving, RevPAR retreated 0.7%.

Hurricane markets, the 13 impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton in September 2024, continued to impact year-over-year comparisons. Excluding those 13, RevPAR in the remaining markets was up 0.9% in the fortnight and up in both individual weeks with the week before Thanksgiving gaining 1.3%. More importantly, the occupancy declines that have plagued the hotel industry all year slowed considerably when excluding the hurricane markets, as occupancy was basically flat over the past two weeks (-0.1ppts). ADR, however, remained below the inflation rate, rising by 1.1% in the fortnight.

Among the Top 25 Markets, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and St. Louis all saw strong, double-digit RevPAR growth over the two-week period with San Francisco and St. Louis posting exaggerated RevPAR increases (+51.3% and +35.5%, respectively). Both saw very strong gains in the week before Thanksgiving, but the growth also extended into the Thanksgiving week.

On the other end of the spectrum, Tampa saw RevPAR decline 28.2% over the fortnight due to last year’s hurricane-led growth. Other markets with falling RevPAR included Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, and Seattle, where two-week RevPAR dropped by more than 6%. In total, 13 of the Top 25 Markets saw RevPAR retreat during the fortnight.

Group demand driving several key markets

Group demand for Luxury and Upper Upscale hotels for the two weeks ending 29 November was down 1% even with strong growth in five Top 25 Markets: St. Louis (+88.2%), San Francisco (+77.7%), Oahu (+35%), Detroit (+27.9%), and Washington, DC (+12%). The growth was mostly in the week ending 22 November, but strong group demand growth also lingered into the Thanksgiving week in several of these markets.

Both St. Louis and San Francisco have benefited greatly this fall from increased conference activity. In the week ending 22 November, San Francsico hosted Microsoft Ignite 2025, while St. Louis welcomed The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC25). St. Louis has seen strong, group-led performance this year as the market’s convention center, America’s Center, reopened early last year after a renovation. Since the beginning of Q2, St. Louis’ RevPAR has advanced 12.7% on a 5.2ppt occupancy increase and ADR growth of 3.2%. San Francisco has seen a similar RevPAR increase (+13.3%) led by ADR (+7.4%).

Among the various hotel types, the bifurcation contrast was really apparent as Luxury chain scale hotels rose 7.3% over the two weeks, whereas Economy hotels fell 8%. During Thanksgiving week, both Luxury and Upper Upscale chains saw solid occupancy growth with moderate ADR gains. Room demand for both chain scales was up more than 5%, while all other chain scales were down.

Thanksgiving week wasn’t a bust

Looking back at the past 26 Thanksgiving weeks since STR began recording daily results, this Thanksgiving week showed the third highest demand, albeit down slightly
(-0.2%) from a year ago. The demand decrease nearly mirrored the decline in TSA weekly screenings (-0.4%).

In total, 19.8 million rooms were sold in the week as compared to the record 20.6 million sold in Thanksgiving week 2021. While the week only ranked as the third best, Wednesday and Thursday (Thanksgiving Day) individually ranked second in demand behind 2021. Thanksgiving Day occupancy reached 54.9%, the eighth best in history. Thanksgiving weekend occupancy was 57.9%, down a full point from a year ago and ranking 16 of the past 26 Thanksgiving weekends.

RevPAR surges outside the U.S., particularly in the Middle East

Global performance, excluding the U.S. and on a same-store basis, remained robust with RevPAR increasing 8.7% over the past two weeks on a 6.9% ADR gain. ADR has increased by more than 5% in seven of the past 10 weeks. Occupancy was also solid, rising 1.2ppts in the fortnight to 73.9%.

Growth was led by the GCC (Gulf Cooperative Council) countries where RevPAR surged 30.4% as the region is in season with multiple events occurring. Australia, the Caribbean, France, India, Japan, and Spain all saw RevPAR advance more than 10% with Italy and Germany not far behind.

China’s RevPAR grew by 1.2% in the two weeks and has increased for the past six weeks. Like in the U.S., RevPAR growth over the past two weeks bifurcated with Luxury class hotels seeing a 9% increase driven by nearly equal gains in occupancy and ADR, whereas Midscale and Economy class hotels saw RevPAR decrease more than 3% on falling occupancy. Besides Luxury, Upper Upscale was the only other class to see growth in the period. On a market basis, Sanya and Hong Kong saw the highest RevPAR growth rates (15%+). Among the five largest markets, only Shanghai posted a RevPAR increase.

Canada and Mexico saw same-store RevPAR fall in the week ending 22 November followed by growth in the following week. In Canada, the decrease two weeks ago was focused in the two largest markets, Toronto and Vancouver, as RevPAR fell 32% in Toronto on a 30% ADR decline due to difficult comps to last year’s final three Taylor Swift shows. Vancouver’s RevPAR was down 16% on decreases in both occupancy and ADR. In the week ending 29 November, Canadian RevPAR rebounded (+4.9%), but Toronto remained in arrears (-3.4%) with Vancouver up 4.7%.

Mexico saw a similar pattern up two weeks ago and down last week with the percentage decrease and increase nearly the same (-2.3 and +2.1%, respectively). Most of the resort markets were down the week before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday followed by strong growth during the holiday week.

A weak finish for the U.S.

Our general conclusion is that U.S. performance over the past two weeks was decent with hurricane markets accounting for most of the percentage decrease YoY. What remains of concern is the low ADR gains, which remain well below inflation, meaning the pressure on margins will continue.

Looking ahead, RevPAR for the full month of November will come in weaker than what the current MTD results show (-1.3%) due to the loss of a Friday and the addition of a Sunday as compared to last year. We estimate that the month will fall by roughly 2%. December also looks to be on the weak side with RevPAR flat to down due to the movement of holidays. Our analysis shows that a Wednesday Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve have historically resulted in the lowest occupancy for those two days and the days in between.

At this point, there seems to be no stopping the growth outside the U.S., and we expect the year to end on a solid footing.