Feb. 16–This year’s Super Bowl was less than super for hotels in New York and New Jersey.
Hotel occupancy rates for Super Bowl weekend were 61% in Bergen County, N.J., 79% in New York’s Times Square area and 75% in New York’s uptown and midtown areas, according to the hotel consulting and analytics firm STR Analytics.
By contrast, hotels reached 99% occupancy in New Orleans during the 2013 Super Bowl and 91% in Indianapolis during the 2012 Super Bowl, according to STR Analytics.
One possible reason for the lower occupancy rates this year is that the area in New York and New Jersey has more hotel rooms to offer, making sellouts less likely, said Christopher Heywood, a spokesman for NYC & Co., the city’s tourism organization.
Heywood said New York City has added about 5,800 hotel rooms in the last year, bringing the total to about 96,000 rooms — three times as many rooms as either New Orleans or Indianapolis.
“We are just a much bigger destination,” he said.
New York also did not get the bump in revenue that Super Bowl hosts have enjoyed in the past.
During the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis, daily hotel rates shot up nearly 200% and revenue per room grew about 900%.
But in New York, where hotel rates are already the highest in the nation, daily rates during the last Super Bowl rose only about 100%, with revenue per room climbing 137%, said Carter Wilson, director of STR Analytics.
“The impact was diluted because New York is such a high-tier city to begin with,” he said.
