February was a banner month for Utah hoteliers housing Olympic Winter Games guests.
In fact, Salt Lake's occupancy rate of 84 percent outpaced the nation's top 25 markets, including Miami, New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego and Atlanta — all cities that suffered year-over-year declines in occupancy.
Even sunny Oahu, which had the second-highest occupancy rate of nearly 78 percent, fell short of Salt Lake's sold-out celebration, according to Smith Travel Research, a Tennessee-based research firm that tracks national occupancy rates.
The sampling tracked 106 properties along the Wasatch Front encompassing 75 percent of the 20,280 total available rooms, said Brad Garner, spokesman for Smith Travel Research.
And Salt Lake's occupancy rate, up 27 percent from the 66 percent figure of February 2001, was by far the highest in February of any U.S. city, Garner said.
"We've not ever filled up this long," said Del Brewster, general manager of downtown Salt Lake's 200-room Shilo Hotel. "This was a three-week period that we were totally 100 percent full. We have not seen that in the past, and I doubt we will ever see that in the future."
Like other hotels and motels, the Shilo Hotel had to hire additional staff and remain on 24-hour call, seven days a week, to keep up with their guests.
Brewster said he is ready to do it again.
"We would definitely be in favor of having the Olympics coming back, just because our experience was all positive," he said.
Nationally, the average occupancy rate in February stood at just 58 percent, down more than 4 percent from last year. The average room rate was $87, also a decline of nearly 4 percent.
But room rates witnessed a dramatic climb in Utah, averaging $194 for Salt Lake-area hotels — a nearly 131 percent increase over last year's rate of $84, Garner said.
According to the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report, a separate sampling that tracks lodging trends in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico and is conducted by the Utah Hotel and Lodging Association, Salt Lake's occupancy reached almost 91 percent in February, nearly 23 percentage points higher than last year's rate of 68 percent.
Other areas of the state fared just as well, according to the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report.
Ogden hit 86 percent and Utah County reached 84 percent.
"Eighty-six percent occupancy in February is very, very high occupancy, in my opinion," said Jim Budge, general manager of the Ben Lomond Historic Suite Hotel, a 144-room hotel in Ogden that accommodated secret service agents, business executives, Japanese tourists and the Greek Organizing Committee during the 17-day Games.
Tia Gordon, a spokeswoman for the American Hotel and Lodging Association, said it takes a major event like the Olympics to cause occupancy rates to reach the high levels Utah experienced last month.
The timing of the Olympics couldn't have been better for Utah, with most other states showing year-over-year declines in occupancy due to lingering fears over the Sept. 11 attacks and the weak economy.
"I don't think that occupancies U.S.-wide will improve much until about the third quarter of 2003, and the primary reason for that is that the U.S., generally speaking, is overbuilt. There is far more supply than there is demand," Budge said.
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