Developers of the downtown Courtyard Marriott are celebrating a milestone in the hotel’s construction this afternoon at a topping off ceremony, scheduled to begin at 4 p.m.
The eight-story hotel at the intersection of Florida and Third streets is expected to open midyear, some 15 months after its groundbreaking and nearly five years after planning for the $23 million project began.
The Courtyard Marriott, which will be home to downtown’s first Starbucks, will become the seventh hotel in downtown Baton Rouge, adding 132 rooms to some 12,400 rooms in a four-parish market area that has seen little growth in occupancy over the past few years.
Occupancy rates for 2017 averaged 64% through November, the latest month for which data is available from Smith Travel and Research. That’s the same as the 64% occupancy rate hotels market wide averaged both in 2015 and 2014.
Due to the August 2016 flood, occupancy rates in 2016 were artificially inflated at nearly 70%.
“I think we’re in flat mode right now and because the numbers were skewed from 2016 it’s a little hard to predict what is going to happen in 2018,” says Visit Baton Rouge President and CEO Paul Arrigo.
The four-parish market area comprises East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Livingston and Ascension parishes.
While occupancy rates are relatively flat, hotels are performing better as room rates have crept up. The average RevPAR, or revenue per available room, through November 2017 was $58—up from $54.4 in 2015 and $54.6 in 2014.
Again, because of the flood, average RevPAR in 2016 was nearly $64.
Visit Baton Rouge, which provided the numbers from the STR report, does not have data that measures the performance specifically of the downtown submarket so Arrigo says he can’t really tell how downtown hotels are performing compared to the rest of the market.
But he suggests the market overall could be doing better.
“I wish demand overshadowed supply,” he says.
—Stephanie Riegel
