This is why they call him The Answer Man.
In a column today at the Asheville Citizen-Times, John Boyle provides what city officials and elected leaders have not: data on hotels. Among the information he provides (via Explore Asheville Convention & Visitors Bureau):
- Buncombe County had a net gain of 101 rooms from July 1, 2018-June 30, 2019
- There are currently 7,965 hotel rooms in Buncombe
As the Asheville City Council prepared to institute a ban on new hotels for one year, maybe there should be an examination of whether 8,000 rooms is too many. Or not enough.
And what happens when the city bans hotels, but neighboring jurisdictions don't? Doesn't this simply encourage sprawl and traffic?
This should be part of the discussion.
Similarly, occupancy needs to be part of this debate. It should not be the only metric used to determine saturation, but it should be one of them.
That data shows for the 2019 fiscal year, hotel room supply "increased 3.1% and was absorbed," while "occupancy increased 1.6%," the chart showed.
Occupancy has held steady since fiscal year 2015 (72.6%), ebbing a touching in fiscal years 2017 (72.5%) and 2018 (72.4%), before rising to 73.6% for fiscal year 2019. Way back in fiscal year 2010, it stood at 58.4%.
It seems like if occupancy holds steady then we needed the new rooms to help meet demand.
The national occupancy rate was 66% last year - and that was a thirty year high.
The most incredible thing about the local debate over tourism and hotel construction is how data is so rarely part of the discussion.