Hawaii Hotel Occupancy Looking Up?

(photo by jurvetson)

Hawaii Hotel Occupancy Rates

As with most things in the economy lately, tourism has been hurting the last year or two. Hawaii is a major tourist destination and they happen to post lots of good data on their state website. Here is the hotel occupancy for the years 2003 through 2007 by month:

You will notice an obvious seasonality to the hotel occupancy in Hawaii which peaks in February and July. There is also an apparent trend up through 2005 and then '06 and '07 trend down from there. I am only including data through '07 in this plot because that was all that was easily available from the Hawaii state website but I will have more recent data below.

Google Search Data for "Hawaii Hotel"

Here is a plot showing Google Search Volume for the term "Hawaii Hotel" since 2004:

You see the same seasonality in the search volume data. Here is a comparison of the average seasonality of the actual hotel occupancy data compared to the Google search data for the years '04-'07:

Interesting confirmation of the validity of looking at Google search data on "Hawaii Hotel" compared to the actual hotel occupancy data. They line up nicely from a seasonal standpoint. And it looks like the search data slightly leads the actual occupancy data (notice that search data peaks in January where occupancy peaks in February) which make sense as people searching for "Hawaii Hotel" may be looking for upcoming months so there ought to be some lag.

Last Few Years' Trend in Hawaii Hotels

Below is a plot showing the annual average hotel occupancy and Google search volume for the last 5 years:

You can see above the annual average occupancy has been dropping with the exception of 2006 and the annual average search volume has dropped over that time period as well. Again, the actual occupancy data correlates well with the Google search volume as it did in the seasonal comparison above. I think in a case like this where internet searches are a major way that people find hotels, Google search analysis can be quite effective.

Any Reason to be Optimistic Looking Forward?

When looking at any data that has a strong seasonal effect, it is always important when doing shorter term comparisons to keep that seasonal effect in mind. A seasonal plot is a good way of seeing how we are doing say this year compared to the last at this time in the year. Here is the last three years of search data on a seasonal plot with each year being a different color:

Notice how 2008 was lower than 2007 across the year but the spread widened in the summer as the recession and financial crisis was coming to light. But notice this year so far in green. Although 2009 started out behind 2008, the last few months it has crossed above 2009. The latest actual occupancy data available is from May '09 and that data is still lower than last year but June and July is when the seasonal summer peak occurs and that data will be real interesting to see.

A Forecast for Hawaii Hotel Occupancy

So based on this analysis, I will go out on a limb and say I think Hawaii hotel occupancy will turn up in the next few months. At minimum, I think that gap between 2009 and last year will close and we may even see July up from last July which would be a real bullish sign. I will have to return to this analysis later in the year and see how this forecast panned out.
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