Isle budget hotels fare best

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Value-minded travelers boosted January occupancy at Hawaii's budget hotels, the only category to show an increase.

However, higher room rates at the luxury resorts more than made up for lower occupancy and boosted revenues at those hotels, according to a new study by the accounting and management consultant firm PKF-Hawaii.

"Statewide, all quality classifications showed a decrease in occupancy, except for budget hotels," said Ernie Watari, PKF-Hawaii chairman and chief executive officer. "Large hotels outperformed all other size categories with the highest average daily rate and occupancy for the month of January," he said.

In a supplement that followed its earlier monthly hotel occupancy report, PKF-Hawaii yesterday reported on occupancy according to type and size of hotel.

The budget hotels, with an average daily room rate of $47.83, showed an occupancy average of 77.7 percent in January. The result was average revenue per available room of $37.14 a day. Those numbers were all up slightly from January 1997, when an average daily rate of $47.07 and occupancy of 75.6 percent resulted in daily room revenue of $35.56.

At the luxury end of the scale, the daily room rate of $238.36 in January was nearly five times the average for the budget hotels and .015 percent higher than the average daily rate of $234.90 in the year-earlier month.

Occupancy in the luxury hotels slipped to an average of 70.9 percent, from 71.2 percent in January 1997, but the higher room rates resulted in revenue per available room of $168.90, up 0.01 percent from $167.23 in the previous January.

The biggest hotels had the highest occupancy. Properties with more than 500 rooms were 76.3 percent full in January, up from 75.7 percent in the year-earlier month. Those big hotels also had the highest average daily room rate, $169.18, up 0.15 percent from $168.92