U.S. hotels generated revenue per available room of $107.43 in August 2026, a 2.0% increase over August 2025 and a deceleration from the prior month's pace of growth, according to data from CoStar, the Arlington, Virginia-based real estate data and analytics provider.

The gains came from both occupancy and rate. Occupancy reached 66.4%, up 0.5% year over year, while average daily rate climbed 1.5% to $161.78. ADR contributed the larger share of RevPAR growth, a pattern that matters for operators because rate-driven gains flow more directly to bottom-line margins than occupancy gains, which carry incremental housekeeping, laundry and utilities costs per occupied room.

CoStar's hotel performance sample spans 95,000 properties and 12.2 million rooms globally, giving the monthly figures broad coverage of the U.S. branded and independent inventory tracked through its STR benchmarking business.

San Francisco led all Top 25 Markets

San Francisco reported the largest increases among the Top 25 Markets across all three key performance metrics. Occupancy rose 6.6% to 79.3%, ADR jumped 8.7% to $216.77, and RevPAR surged 15.8% to $171.84 — the strongest top-line momentum of any major U.S. market in the month.

The city's gains continued its recovery trajectory after years of underperformance, and the August numbers show demand and pricing power arriving together. A 15.8% RevPAR increase on roughly flat available-room supply implies operators there moved rate aggressively into strengthening demand rather than simply filling rooms at discount.

New Orleans and New York lagged

New Orleans registered the steepest declines among the Top 25 Markets in both occupancy and RevPAR. Occupancy fell 7.7% to 43.3%, and RevPAR dropped 9.0% to $51.63. An occupancy level below 45% in a Top 25 market puts acute pressure on fixed-cost coverage, as staffing levels, property upkeep and debt service must be met from a thinner base of occupied room-nights.

New York City posted the largest ADR decline among the Top 25 Markets, down 3.3% to $275.07. Even with the drop, the market retained the highest rate in the country by a wide margin, though softening rate in the largest U.S. hotel market signals that operators there are pulling back on pricing — a shift that typically shows up first in the luxury and upper-upscale segments where New York's supply is concentrated.

Slower pace nationally

CoStar noted that August 2026 performance showed positive year-over-year comparisons, but at a slower pace than July. The moderation suggests the industry's post-pandemic pricing cycle is maturing, with operators increasingly reliant on genuine demand growth rather than the rate-led gains that defined 2022 through 2024.

For hotel owners and operators, the August data frames the budget question heading into the fall: a 1.5% ADR increase nationally does not fully offset recent labor and insurance cost inflation, which means margins in most markets will depend on holding the occupancy line through the shoulder season. Markets with group and business-transient demand — San Francisco being the clearest August example — are positioned to do that; leisure-dependent markets like New Orleans face a harder fourth quarter.