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Hurricane Laura evacuees sheltering in Austin caused 34.5% increase in hotel occupancy, report says
Six Texas markets reported double-digit percentage increases, led by San Antonio (+38.1% to 59.1%), Austin (+34.5% to 57.2%) and Houston (+31.2% to 51.0%).
AUSTIN, Texas — Hurricane Laura evacuees sheltering in Austin caused a significant increase in hotel demand in the City, according to a data analysis report from STR.
The report stated that Austin saw a 34.5% increase in hotel occupancy when comparing the week of Aug. 23 to Aug. 29 to the week prior. Austin’s hotel occupancy during this week grew to 57.2%, according to the report.
Statewide, hotel demand saw an increase of 17% to an occupancy rate of 54.4%.
Despite the dramatic increase in hotel occupancy over the course of one week, STR officials attribute COVID-19 as a contributing factor to why hotels were not reportedly overrun.
“Different from the past natural disasters that have led to widescale evacuations, Hurricane Laura hit at a time when hotel performance is incredibly low because of the pandemic,” said Jan Freitag, STR’s SVP of lodging insights. “Usually with these analyses, we see demand shift geographically from the markets in the path of a storm to evacuation zones. In this case, the trend was simpler with increased hotel demand for most markets because there wasn’t a great deal of business to lose ahead of the storm.”
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Six Texas markets reported double-digit percentage increases, led by San Antonio (+38.1% to 59.1%), Austin (+34.5% to 57.2%) and Houston (+31.2% to 51.0%), the report said.
“We anticipate the Hurricane Laura impact on hotel performance to remain short-term,” Freitag said. “Widespread closures and a massive amount of displacements are what cause a long-term impact. Fortunately, it appears that won’t be the case with this storm.”
KVUE spoke with some Hurricane Laura evacuees in August, some of whom were worried about what their neighborhoods look like on the Texas Coast. You can read more about their stories here.
Additionally, the City had set up the Austin Convention Center for evacuees to shelter. The Austin Convention Center’s capacity supported “135 shelter spaces,” officials said.
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