Los Angeles Hotels Show Uptick in Business

The numbers represent the first sign of improvements in more than a year

Updated 9:45 AM PST, Wed, Oct 21, 2009

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It's a bad time to be in the hotel business…unless you're in Los Angeles. While hotels across the country continue to struggle with slumping occupancy rates and falling revenues, newly released industry data shows signs of improvement in Southern California.

The numbers are the latest in a series of reports chronicling one of the hotel industry's worst slumps in decades, the LA Times reported.

While the hotel occupancy rate nationwide dropped 5.4 percentage points to 59.8 percent in the first week of October, cities like Anaheim, home of Disneyland, saw a boost. The occupancy rate there jumped 2.3 percentage points to 63.4 percent. The number of group bookings, such as conventions and trade shows, jumped 27.5 percent for the first two weeks of October, compared with the same period last year, according to the report cited by the Times.

The number of group bookings also jumped, by 18.1 percent, in Los Angeles for the week that ended Oct. 10, the Times reported.

The numbers represent the first sign of improvements in more than a year. The Smith Travel Research report shows a slight rebound in spending among travelers in Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, New Orleans and Boston, among other cities.

Although Tuesday's data show some improvements in a handful of cities, industry experts quoted by The Times said a nationwide industry rebound will not start until 2011 or 2012.