B5
THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, AuguST 7, 2021
Tourists start to return to Portland
By JAMIE GOLDBERG
The Oregonian
With only a handful of its rooms booked
at the start of the coronavirus pandemic,
managers decided to contract with Mult-
nomah County to convert the Jupiter Hotel
into a temporary homeless shelter. Its newer
sibling hotel across the street, the Jupiter
Next, sat mostly empty. Even in the sum-
mer, it struggled to fill even a third of its
rooms.
A year later, the 67-room Jupiter Next
is packed on weekends and booking up
those rooms several weeks in advance. The
southeast Portland hotel is even charging
slightly more for those nights than before
the pandemic.
“It’s kind of been a slow climb,” said
Nick Pearson, the hotel’s general manager.
“June is really where we saw a big shift.
Now, the whole market is at a point where
weekends are filling up.”
Tourism in Portland and across the
United States plummeted last year as
would-be travelers instead stayed in iso-
lation at home. Average hotel occupancy
in Portland dropped below 37% in 2020,
according to hotel market research com-
pany STR, down from almost 74% the year
prior.
But tourism has slowly picked up in Port-
land over the last two months as coronavi-
rus restrictions have eased and more people
have been vaccinated.
Portland hotels recorded an aver-
age occupancy of more than 56% in June,
which remains down 30 percentage points
from June 2019 but is by far the highest
monthly occupancy rate since the start of
the pandemic. Occupancy spikes over 70%
on weekends, but remains way down on
weekdays.
Even more tourists are opting to stay in
vacation rentals through sites like Airbnb.
Those properties had an average occupancy
rate of more than 82% in June, exceeding
the average occupancy of about 76% in
June 2019. Full month data from July is not
yet available.
Many hotels and short-term rentals that
shuttered last year have since reopened, but
occupancy numbers may be inflated because
some remain closed. The Jupiter Hotel, still
housing people experiencing homelessness,
won’t reopen to the public again until next
summer.
Still, operators say they’ve seen a notice-
able pickup in business.
Susan Moray began offering summer
bookings for the two vacation rental units
she owns in Ladd’s Addition in February
after renting the units to longer-term renters
last year as tourism plummeted.
She said bookings were slow at first, but
Mark Graves/The Oregonian
Bars, clubs and food carts in downtown Portland were packed with people late last month.
‘I dIdN’T EXPECT THINgS TO COME
BACK LIKE THIS. A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO
HAVE RENTALS IN THIS AREA ARE BOOKEd.
IT FEELS LIKE IT’S BACK TO NORMAL.’
Susan Moray | owner of two vacation rental units
as vaccines became more widespread in
March and April, interest quickly picked up.
The properties are now booked out through
September.
“I didn’t expect things to come back like
this,” Moray said. “A lot of people who
have rentals in this area are booked. It feels
like it’s back to normal.”
Lasse Christiansen, who rents two South-
east Division Street houses on Airbnb, said
he has noticed a significant spike in demand
as well.
Last year, he said many of the people
who stayed at his properties were Portland-
ers looking for a couple’s getaway. Now,
he said he is mostly getting visitors on road
trips from Seattle or California, or even
extended road trips from the East Coast.
With the resurgence in demand, he has been
able to charge more per night than he did
before the pandemic.
“People still want to come here,” Chris-
tiansen said. “We have the natural beauty
that’s a big force for attracting folks, along
with the breweries and restaurants — and
now the restaurants are coming back. And
the particular neighborhood I’m in on Divi-
sion has a lot to offer for folks coming in
from out of town.”
On average, Portland’s short-term rentals
are charging more now than before the pan-
demic. Steve Halasz, research director for
the city’s tourism bureau, Travel Portland,
said the price of hotel rooms in the city has
rebounded faster than anticipated as well,
with average nightly rates sitting at $152 in
late July, down from $175 in July 2019.
Weekly data from STR shows that occu-
pancy rates have held steady in July even as
the delta variant has led to a concerning spike
in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
“Tourism is coming back,” Halasz said.
“People are fairly confident traveling right
and have been for the past few months. The
state has done a great job with vaccination
rates. For the time being, people feel pretty
confident traveling, and I think we’re seeing
it with the numbers.”
Even so, the upswing in COVID-19
cases could threaten the comeback. The
number of newly reported cases in Oregon
nearly doubled this week as compared to a
week prior and forecasts predict the state
has yet to reach the top of its current wave.
And while tourists are returning, many
are still avoiding hotels in downtown
Portland.
Even as average occupancy rates at
hotels on Portland’s east side, where there
are smaller hotels and more extended-stay
properties, have outpaced pre-pandemic
levels this year, occupancy rates in down-
town have continued to lag.
Approximately 56% of downtown hotel
rooms were filled on average in June, down
from about 87% pre-pandemic. (The recent
rebound, though, is still a vast improvement
from last June, when less than 1 in 5 hotel
rooms were booked.)
Visitors have been slow to return to
downtown hotels in other markets as well.
Average occupancy rates in June were 64%
in downtown Denver, 53% in downtown
Seattle and 30% in downtown Vancouver,
British Columbia.
Shannon Overholser, a spokesperson
for Provenance Hotels, which operates
six properties in downtown Portland, said
occupancy on weekends at the hotels has
exceeded 70%, a number boosted by leisure
travelers. One of the company’s six down-
town Portland hotels, the Dossier, remains
closed due to staffing shortages, but Over-
holser said the company hopes to reopen it
in September.
Business travel, however, remains down
substantially, with conferences and conven-
tions still postponed. That has had an out-
sized impact on hotels in the city center.
International travel hasn’t rebounded,
either, with pandemic travel restrictions still
in place.
Hotel operators downtown say the state
of the city center still remains a significant
concern as well, and they’ve heard from
tourists who don’t feel safe walking around
downtown Portland.
Last month, an out-of-town guest staying
at The Hoxton Hotel in Old Town/China-
town was stabbed in what police described
as an unprovoked attack by a stranger. The
woman was taken to a hospital and treated
for a possible liver laceration.
George Schweitzer, managing director at
The Benson, said he is continuing to hear
from guests who say they enjoyed the hotel
but were concerned about the surrounding
area.
On TripAdvisor, the hotel and attraction
review site, recent guests have complained
about visible homelessness, boarded up
businesses, people suffering mental health
crises and open drug or alcohol abuse. “I
didn’t feel very safe walking after dinner,”
one wrote. “We wondered if we had stum-
bled onto the set of the Walking Dead,”
another said.
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