With Winter Ahead, a Sunny Outlook for Caribbean Hotels

Summer’s over, kids are back in school and travel starts to cool down with the weather. 

But even in the year’s customary nadir, the Caribbean still showed strong improvement last month, according to new data from hotel analytics firm STR. 

Hotel occupancy was 51.5 percent in September — representing a nearly 5 percent increase over the same period in 2022, in a strong sign for the rest of the fall season. 

Average daily rates were actually up by 8.4 percent, rising to $224.63, while revenue per available room (RevPar) increased by 13.7 percent to $115.68.

For the year, hotel occupancy in the Caribbean stands at 66.5 percent through the end of September, a 9 percent jump over the first three quarters of 2022. 

That’s accompanied by average daily rates of $328.12 (a 13.4 percent jump over last year) and revenues of $218.07 per room — a nearly 24 percent increase over 2022. 

Revenue of the surveyed properties has topped $16 billion so far this year, according to STR. 

STR’s data surveyed a little over 2,000 hotels comprising 272,879 rooms in the wider Caribbean region. 

It augurs well for the rest of the Caribbean, where a number of Caribbean destinations, from traditional powers like Jamaica to up-and-coming hotspots like Bonaire, have been reporting strong starts for the autumn season — with numbers above those seen in 2019, before the onset of the pandemic. 

It also lines up with what seems to be the outlook for the major airlines servicing the Caribbean: carriers like American Airlines and Delta are all significantly ramping up their capacity and route networks for the upcoming winter season across the region.