Boston did not recover its hotel business by filling more rooms. It recovered by charging more for the ones it fills. That single fact explains most of what a traveller now experiences when they search for a room in this city, and it is visible in the year-end numbers.
The headline figures
At the close of 2025 the Boston market recorded 77.3% occupancy, an average daily rate of $301.97 and RevPAR of $233.54, according to the year-end series compiled by Pinnacle Advisory Group and published by Meet Boston. Set those against 2019 — 82.5% occupancy, $261.31 ADR, $215.61 RevPAR — and the shape of the recovery becomes obvious.
Occupancy is still 5.2 percentage points below its pre-pandemic level. Rate is $40.66 above it. Revenue per available room, the measure hotel owners actually watch, finished 8.3% ahead of 2019. Fewer guests, more money.
The recovery has flattened
The three-year series is the most telling part of the data. Year-end occupancy ran 76.4% in 2023, 77.2% in 2024 and 77.3% in 2025. Average daily rate ran $292.05, then $301.20, then $301.97.
Between 2024 and 2025, in other words, occupancy moved by a tenth of a percentage point and the average rate moved by seventy-seven cents. After two years of genuine recovery growth, 2025 was a holding year — the market found its level and stayed there.
Why the rate holds: almost nothing is being built
Room supply in the Boston and Cambridge market grew 1.5% in 2024, with a further 1.3% projected for 2025 — increases attributed, in each case, to essentially a single hotel opening. In a market that Pinnacle Advisory Group ranks third in the United States for average daily rate and fifth for occupancy among the top 25 markets, that scarcity is not incidental. It is the mechanism.
Boston is difficult and expensive to build in. The result is a hotel market where demand can soften without rates following it down, because there is no wave of new inventory competing for the same guest.
Who is filling the rooms
The 2024 demand mix breaks down as 42% transient leisure, 28% transient corporate, 26% group and 4% contract — against 45% / 27% / 22% / 6% the year before. Leisure gave up three points; group business picked up four.
That shift matters more than it looks. Group business books further ahead, fills midweek nights and clusters around the convention calendar. A market leaning into group demand is a market where the traveller booking three weeks out finds less room to negotiate.
What the city takes
Boston collected $144,629,614 in room occupancy excise in fiscal 2024, and has budgeted $148.8 million for fiscal 2026. It is the largest excise the City collects. For the guest, the practical number is the one at the bottom of the folio: the combined tax on a Boston hotel room, across all levels of government, is 14.95%.
At the top of the market
The luxury tier behaves differently from the market as a whole. In 2024 it ran 60% occupancy at a $612 average rate, with RevPAR up 6% year on year. Half-empty, and thriving — because at that rate it does not need to be full.
What this means if you are booking
Three things follow from these numbers. Rate, not availability, is what will shape your search: you will usually find a room, and you will usually pay for it. The month you choose will move your bill far more than the hotel you choose, a pattern we take apart in our piece on Boston's hotel calendar. And because supply is not growing, none of this is likely to change quickly.
Sources and method
Occupancy, ADR and RevPAR figures come from the year-end series compiled by Pinnacle Advisory Group and published by Meet Boston, and from Rachel Roginsky's Boston/Cambridge lodging market review in the New England Real Estate Journal, which uses STR data. Tax figures come from the City of Boston FY26 local revenue statement.
One caution on reading Boston hotel data elsewhere: different analysts draw the market boundary differently, and the resulting occupancy and rate figures can diverge by several points. The series used here is internally consistent year to year; we have not mixed it with others.
These figures are free to reuse with a link back to this page.
Frequently asked
What is the average hotel price in Boston?
The market-wide average daily rate was $301.97 across 2025. That is an annual average across every tier and every month: the same market ran $194.66 in January and $386.46 in October.
Are Boston hotels more expensive than before the pandemic?
Yes, materially. The 2025 average rate was $40.66 higher than 2019, while occupancy remained 5.2 points lower.
What tax will I pay on a Boston hotel room?
14.95% in total across all levels of government, on top of the room rate.
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