Elgin Area Chamber Of Commerce: Industrial Production Increases, Hotel Occupancy Drops

Press release from the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce:

September 16, 2021

Factory activity in the New York region jumped in September. (CoStar)

By Richard Lawson
CoStar News
 

US Hotel Occupancy Drops
 

U.S. hotel occupancy’s weekly decline resumed while weekend travelers helped soften the dip.

Occupancy for the week that ended Sept. 11 fell a percentage point to 60%, according to hotel industry research firm STR, which is owned by CoStar Group.
Hotels had dealt with Labor Day and Rosh Hashanah holidays over the past couple of weeks.
Weekend occupancy averaged about 70%. College and professional football games could be big boosters to weekend hotel business, according to Kelsey Fenerty, an STR senior research analyst.
But Hurricane Ida also helped drive people displaced by flooding and other damage into hotel rooms. New Orleans registered 67.4% occupancy, putting it second behind Denver in the top spot among the 25 largest tourism markets tracked by STR.
Industrial Production Increases
Industrial production increased again in August to stay above pre-pandemic levels, but Hurricane Ida curbed activity. The Federal Reserve Board reported that production grew 0.4% from July, half of the growth from June to July.

It would have been 0.7% had Ida, a hurricane that brought flooding and had winds at more than 150 miles per hour, closed petrochemical and plastic resin plants and petroleum refineries. The Fed estimated that dropped production by a 0.3 percentage point.

Production is at 101.6% of its 2017 average and 5.9% better than August 2020.Capacity utilization increased by 0.2% but remains below the long-run average from 1972 to 2020 by 3.2 percentage points.

Source: CoStar Group, www.costar.com

This press release was produced by the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author’s own.