Having a Hard Time Finding a Disney Hotel Reservation? This Might Be Why!

By Sara McOmber Leave a Comment

The COVID-19 pandemic hit many companies hard, and that includes The Walt Disney Company. Even now, when many experts consider the pandemic to be over, Disney is still on the road to recovery.

Disney World Entrance

A report recently filed by Disney shows just how far the company has come in the last year in terms of recovery and profits. Hotel occupancy, per-room guest spending, and more statistics point to some very positive changes for Disney’s bottom line.

Disney filed a report with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and part of that report included statistics on the Disney Parks hotels. This includes hotels at Disney World, Disneyland, and Disney’s international theme parks.

Disney’s Grand Floridian

According to this report, the occupancy at domestic Disney parks hotels nearly doubled from 2021 to 2022, going from 42% in 2021 to 82% in 2022. That means Disney is filling many more hotel rooms now than they were a year ago.

©Disney

In addition, the guest spending per room at domestic hotels increased drastically from 1% in 2021 to 19% in 2022, meaning Disney is making more money on those hotel room guests than they were last year. “Per Room Guest Spending” is defined as “total revenue from room rentals and sales of food, beverage, and merchandise at [Disney’s] hotels, divided by total occupied hotel room nights.”

Disney’s Riviera Resort

Internationally, the numbers look a little different. Occupancy is still fairly low in 2022 at 56%, although it’s much higher than the 2021 number of 21%.

Tokyo Disneyland Resort

The reason for the lower occupancy is that Hong Kong Disneyland Resort and Shanghai Disney Resort have both been closed for several weeks in 2022, and Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland Resort were closed for part of 2021. You can see the total weeks of operation in 2021 and 2022 in the graph below.

©Disney

Elsewhere in the report, Disney stated that “growth in resorts and vacations revenue was primarily due to increases of 51% from higher occupied hotel room nights, 32% from an increase in passenger cruise days, and 17% from higher average daily hotel room rates.” So although the increase came mostly from higher occupancies, Disney has also profited significantly from raising hotel room rates.