If you are heading towards New York City for vacation, hotel rooms won’t be cheap.
The winter season is a popular time to travel, and hotels are already preparing by increasing room rates, The New York Times reported. Tourists who stayed in the Big Apple in September paid about $417 a night, according to real estate analytics firm CoStar, the most expensive monthly rate in the city’s history. The company added that the only place where room rates were higher during the same period was Maui.
Of course, it has never been cheap to visit the concrete jungle with Nightly rates of $1,000 becoming the norm at some luxury resort properties this year. The newspaper published the figures and a king-size room at the St. Regis New York, a five-star hotel in Downtown Manhattanwill earn you over $1,800 in November. Overall, mid-range hotels have increased their nightly rates by more than 50% since fall 2020.
“Hospitality companies, like everyone else, are playing catch-up,” David Sherwyn, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, told the newspaper. This increase can be explained by several factors, including a post-Covid-19 surge in demand, the use of hotels as migrant shelters, and a citywide crackdown on short-term rental platforms like Airbnb. As a result, some people are now looking for alternative travel choices, whether that be staying in more affordable destinations. New Jersey or postpone their plans altogether until after the New Year.
“I knew New York was expensive. But I didn’t expect the most affordable options to cost $600,” admitted 23-year-old undergraduate student Jon Lee. Times. The results of a survey conducted in April last year revealed that 69 percent of those surveyed would not spend more than $500 per night on accommodation and only 24% set their limit at $1,000 per night.
Nevertheless, the rooms are filling up. In fact, 91% of hotel rooms in New York were booked in September, which is about the same level of occupancy as before the pandemic, CoStar said. The agency also projects that New York City will welcome 65 million visitors by the end of 2024 and that by 2025, that number could reach a record 68 million.
