What Is Occupancy Rate?

Occupancy rate is the share of a property's available rooms that were occupied over a set period, shown as a percentage. For a hotel, it is the number of occupied rooms divided by the number of available rooms (HSMAI Academy Glossary: Occupancy).

Last updated: October 2026

How occupancy rate works

The occupancy rate formula has two parts: rooms sold, which is demand, divided by rooms available, which is supply. In STR's benchmark method, monthly supply is the property's total number of rooms multiplied by the days in the month (A Tale of Two Occupancies: Total Room Inventory vs. STR Standard, Hospitality Net). Multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage.

A 50-room hotel has 1,500 rooms of supply in a 30-day month. If it sells 1,050 room nights, its occupancy rate is 1,050 divided by 1,500, or 70%.

Short-term rental data uses the same demand-over-supply idea (Short Term Rental Presentation Glossary, Rhode Island Legislature STR Commission). AirDNA and Airbnb count nights rather than rooms (How does AirDNA calculate occupancy rate? AirDNA Help Center) (How do I read my performance data for occupancy and rates? Airbnb Help Center).

Why it matters for hotel distribution

Distribution decisions change the denominator. A property that closes rooms, blocks dates on a channel calendar or takes a listing offline is changing what counts as available, and each data source treats those choices differently.

Bed-place occupancy in EU official statistics counts only the bed-places that are actually open, leaving out seasonal and other temporary closures (Eurostat metadata: Tourism accommodation occupancy (tour_occ)).

On the rental side, AirDNA divides reserved days by active listing nights over the last twelve months, and a night counts as active only if it is not blocked and the listing has had a reservation in the past 28 days (How does AirDNA calculate occupancy rate? AirDNA Help Center). AirDNA leaves blocked nights out of its occupancy count; Airbnb's dashboard counts blocked nights in its separate unbooked-nights figure (How do I read my performance data for occupancy and rates? Airbnb Help Center).

Occupancy is also a planning number. An occupancy forecast is a hotel's estimate of the rooms it will sell or have occupied for a day, a month, a quarter or a year (HSMAI Academy Glossary: Occupancy).

Occupancy rate compared with ADR, RevPAR and other measures

MeasureWhat it showsHow it is calculated
Occupancy rateHow many of the available rooms soldRooms sold ÷ rooms available
ADRThe average price of the rooms that soldRoom revenue ÷ rooms sold
RevPARVolume and price togetherADR × occupancy
Airbnb and AirDNA occupancyHow many of the available nights were bookedNights booked ÷ nights available
Total Room Inventory occupancyDemand against every room in a marketRooms sold ÷ all rooms, open or closed

ADR is hotel room revenue divided by the total number of rooms sold, and RevPAR is the product of ADR and average daily occupancy, so occupancy is one of RevPAR's two inputs (CorePoint Lodging Inc., Form 10-12B/A exhibit 99.1, SEC).

Reading occupancy next to rate shows what drove a result. In 2025, US hotel ADR rose 0.9% to $160.54 while RevPAR fell 0.3% to $100.02, because occupancy fell (CoStar: U.S. hotel occupancy, RevPAR down YOY in 2025, Hotel Management). It was the first full-year fall in US hotel occupancy and RevPAR since 2020 (CoStar: U.S. hotel occupancy, RevPAR down YOY in 2025, Hotel Management).

The two hotel benchmark methods differ on closed rooms. CoStar's STR standard leaves temporarily closed rooms that could not be booked out of supply, while Total Room Inventory occupancy divides demand by all the rooms in a market regardless of operating status (A Tale of Two Occupancies: Total Room Inventory vs. STR Standard, Hospitality Net).

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate occupancy rate?
Divide the rooms sold in a period by the rooms available in that period, then multiply by 100. A hotel with 100 rooms and 65 of them occupied has an occupancy rate of 65%. For a month, rooms available is the number of rooms multiplied by the days in the month. The same steps answer how to find or determine the occupancy rate for any period you choose.
What is the average occupancy rate for a hotel?
US hotel occupancy averaged 62.3% in 2025, down 1.2% on 2024, in CoStar data. The 2026 forecast for US hotels from CoStar and Tourism Economics is 63.1%. Average occupancy for European hotels is about 68% in a separate CoStar estimate, which does not state the period it covers.
What is the average occupancy rate for Airbnb?
US short-term rental occupancy was 56.9% in 2025, up from 56.7% in 2024, in AirDNA's data. AirDNA calculates occupancy with its own method, so compare it with hotel figures carefully.
How do you check occupancy rate on Airbnb?
Hosts can see it in their Airbnb performance data. Airbnb shows average occupancy rate as the number of nights booked divided by the total nights available to be booked. The same dashboard shows unbooked nights, and that count includes nights the host blocked on the calendar.
What is an occupancy forecast?
It is a hotel's written estimate of how many rooms it will sell or have occupied over a coming day, month, quarter or year. Actual occupancy looks back at rooms already sold. The forecast looks ahead, so a hotel can compare the two once the period ends and see how close its estimate came.

Related terms

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Where Jetstream fits

Occupancy counts what guests could actually book, so a room that is open in the property's own system but missing from a channel is a sale that channel cannot make. Jetstream builds an AI channel manager that connects a property's reservation system to the channels where guests book and keeps rooms, rates and availability accurate on each one, managed from one place.

See Jetstream's AI channel manager Book a demo