Has the Pandemic Undermined Off-Season Offers?
“Covid accelerated issues for Jackson,” stated Sadek Darwiche, the co-owner and basic supervisor of Lodge Jackson downtown. The previously sluggish months — October, November, April and Might — noticed a spike in visitation, practically doubling prepandemic norms final October.
“Shoulder season, in 2022, may be gone in Florida, Hawaii and on the huge nationwide parks with many prime locations seeing double-digit resort demand will increase in January and February,” wrote Christie Hudson, a spokeswoman for Expedia Group, in an electronic mail, noting that many of those areas exceeded 2019 lodging figures.
Most motels cost extra when demand permits. For The Westin Cape Coral Resort at Marina Village in Cape Coral, Fla., extra guests within the usually sluggish summer season and largely regular visitors in any other case pushed charges on common 10 p.c above 2019 ranges.
At Gurney’s Montauk Resort & Seawater Spa within the Hamptons, the surge was extra dramatic as city exiles drove the low season practically to extinction, in line with George Filopoulos, the proprietor of the resort. There, common nightly charges within the usually quiet month of December climbed from $368 in 2019 to $486 in 2020 and $524 this yr.
One of many busiest resort markets, in line with STR, was the Florida Keys, the place common each day charges grew from about $272 in 2019 to $380 in 2021 as of November, or practically 40 p.c.
“Mid-February final yr, we noticed a spike in demand and it has not stopped,” stated Stacey Mitchell, the tourism council director for the Florida Keys.
After all, many locations have been working exhausting to shrink the low season. Door County, for instance, has a preferred half-marathon in early Might, and in 2021, it added a Christmas market in late November and early December to draw guests at historically slower occasions.
