Colorado Springs hotels sold more rooms than a year earlier last month for the first time in 16 months, but only because the COVID-19 pandemic had already triggered many convention cancellations in March 2020.

The 53.9% occupancy rate in March was the highest since October and up from 38.8% in March 2020, the first year-over-year increase since November 2019, according to the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report. Doug Price, CEO of Visit Colorado Springs, attributed the strong gains to low-fare giant Southwest Airlines launching flights to Colorado Springs on March 11 with 13 daily nonstop flights to its hubs in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Colorado Springs hotel occupancy continues decline amid pandemic

“I’m delighted. We are seeing the benefit of increased seats and low fares and it wasn’t even for a full month. I think April will be even better. This is good news that we are on an upward trajectory,” Price said Monday. “March 2020 really lasted only two weeks for the hotel industry; restaurants, bars and other businesses were shut down March 16 last year. This shows how far we have come in the past year.”

Price remains optimistic about the upcoming summer tourism season and beyond as pandemic-related restrictions are loosened or ended and the travel industry begins to recover. His biggest concern — whether hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions will be able to hire enough people to operate at peak capacity during the summer season even though the leisure and hospitality sector employs about 10,000 fewer people than its August 2019 peak of 42,000.

Colorado Springs hotel industry recovery stalls in January

Occupancy for the first three months of year was down to 45.4% from 49.6% a year earlier with full-service hotels that include sit-down restaurants and substantial meeting space lagging behind their limited-service counterparts. The local numbers don’t include The Broadmoor or Cheyenne Mountain Resort, which are grouped with the state’s ski resorts in the “other resorts” category, where the occupancy rate was 52.9%.

The average room rate in Colorado Springs hotels in March was down 3.6% from a year ago to $94.70, the smallest monthly drop since February 2020. The average rate in the first quarter was off 8.6% from the same period last year to $93.10 with full-service rates down 9.4% and limited-service rates off 5.9%. That put the revenue per available room for all local hotels down 15.4% to $42.23.

Colorado Springs hotel occupancy falls to lowest level since at least 1986

The Colorado Springs market outperformed the Denver area, Fort Collins and the statewide average, but wasn’t as strong as resort areas, the Western Slope, Greeley and Loveland. Occupancy in the Denver area improved to 47.9% in March from 37.5% a year ago, hurt by occupancy rates below 40% among downtown convention hotels, south suburban full-service hotels and those along the U.S. 36 corridor. The statewide occupancy rate rose to 51.3% in March from 38.8% a year earlier.

Top performers elsewhere in Colorado included the state’s resort areas at 60.6%, hotels near Denver International Airport at 62.7% Grand Junction at 61.9% and Glenwood Springs at 72.8% — the state’s highest.

Colorado Springs hotels struggling amid tighter COVID-related restrictions

The state’s average room rate in March was down just 1.1% from a year ago to $149.44 but during the first quarter was off 13.4% from a year ago to $143.38. Denver was hit much harder with the average rate in March falling 25.5% from March 2020 to $91.33 and the average for the first quarter down 30.5% from a year earlier to $87.93.

Contact Wayne Heilman 636-0234 Facebook www.facebook.com/wayne.heilman Twitter twitter.com/wayneheilman