Published on September 2, 2025
By: Rana Pratap
San Diego. joins New York City, Boston, Miami, Houston, and Las Vegas, as well as and several other US cities, all have a ‘ battle with the changes in the flow of tourists’ story, described in the most recent Update, which is slated for the middle of the year 2025. The rest of the United States seems to be performing unevenly, and how they manage the inflow of tourists anticipated in the middle of the year 2025 will decide the strength of the industry. Rather, San Diego is forced to join this group, as its high taxes and hotel rates are met with a drop in room occupancy.
For the moment, with its multitude of visitors, New York City, unlike Boston, is losing with unprecedented high daily rates. The result is that Miami’s operations are stable, Houston is still dealing with the pressure, and Las Vegas is still battling against losing customers. Each market, while integrated, emphasizes the need for rapid adaptation of other US cities. San Diego, is well aware, that along with other matured cities, Boston, and Miami, places like New York City, Houston, and Las Vegas are battling to attract customers, as events like the World Cup and the Olympics will certainly attract visitors.

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Thus, the city of San Diego, alongside the other major US cities New York City, Boston, Miami, Houston, and Las Vegas, becomes part of the struggle both physically and spiritually. Alongside them, more cities, having to navigate the challenges and opportunities brought to them by the shifting tourism patterns of mid-2025, are also pulling. Also is the shift, and it is now.

The National Picture of Tourism in 2025

There appears to be a slowdown in hotel performance data across the country. For the Q2 of 2025, bookings for hotel rooms in the United States fell proverbially behind the bookings made a year prior. ADRs surged, though only enough to reduce the impact of occupancy, associated revenues took a hit. So, RevPAR took a dip. As a response, CoStar and STR analysts dropped their projections, forecasting 2025 occupancy to cap out a 62.5% and RevPAR to continue its 2024 stagnation.

This indicates the reconnection periods post-pandemic are tumbling, and regaining its pace. Visitors are being more selective, Skipping some locations, shortening the stayed duration, and Some are re-optimizing the routes. Cities, as always, are does their real-time late period.

San Diego: Strong Past, Uncertain Present

San Diego enjoyed a notable landmark year in 2024, hosting more than 32 million tourists who spent $22 million in the local economy. What changed in the years that followed? Hotel bookings declined compared to pre-pandemic years. Occupancy in late June 2025, stood at 81.5% which is an underwhelming performance compared to the same period last year. Not all the indicators point south though, tax collections from the hotel sector continues to grow, a trend corresponding to an increase in average room rates which now sits at $220, a 26% increase from 2019 levels.

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With an eye on future global events, such as the FIFA World Cup and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, the San Diego Tourism Authority plans to use these events as baits to attract more international visitors to the city. The city however needs to tackle the issue of room rates which is at an all time high.

New York City: Leader in Occupancy

New York City still holds the top position in the U.S. in terms of occupancy. In June 2025,historically, New York City is the only U.S. market to have hotel occupancy during this period at 89% full. This factor is a testimony to the city’s globe wide allure. Despite this, high occupancy is not the best indicator of the state of affairs. New Yorkers, like every other city in the world, are facing the brunt of inflation. Hotel room rates in New York are simply astronomical, bringing hotel owners massive profits. This puts the city in a position of not knowing whether to guarantee a business traveler a room or a leisure traveler in the peak of summer, and comes at the risk of losing the wide tourist market New York is synonymous with.
New York is still a boastful, global center, so this is not the problem. Broadway, museums, and events along with a seemingly never-ending sprawl of central city shopping, draws in a few million everytime. The problem is New York is not increasing in population at the same rate in order to cater to this inflow of tourists. New York is not the only city attempting to solve this problem dilgently. Most other global city centers are facing the same problem.

Boston: High Room Rates Driving Revenue

Boston was one of the cities that achieved the most in the month of June 202 5. The hotels there averaged daily rates of $275 and above. Revenue per available room jumped over 24% from the previous year to $228. In other words, the occupancy may not have been the most impressive in the country, but revenue was bolstered by a lack of competition.
Business travel, conventions, and education tourism work together to bring in revenue for Boston. The city is able to charge premium rates because the hospitals and universities attract people year-round. The issue for Boston is whether these rates correspond to the prices of the national demand forecast for late 2025.

Miami: Mixed Results in South Florida

In June 2025, the occupancy rate for hotels in the Miami-Dade region was around 70.5%. This was the lowest in the area compared to Orlando and even other Florida markets. But at the same time, the city’s revenue per room increased, rising by 4.5%. This suggests that even with fewer guests per hotel, the room rates augmented revenue.
Miami’s leisure and cruise traffic are interlinked advantages. More recently, the city has captured healthy demand from Latin America. But the summer of 2025 underlined the danger of concentrating too much on international travel. The city will have to continue to market its appeal to domestic travelers to stay relevant in an evolving global marketplace.

Houston: Facing Tough Comparisons

Houston’s tourism market is losing momentum in 2025. When the city released its mid-year results, the drop appeared sharp in comparison to 2024. This was due, in part, to demand at the hotels which last year’s figures attributable to the succor from the storms. 2025 looks unlikely to reach such lofty heights without that tailwind.
Houston is trying to generate sales from its convention centre and business travel networks. The energy sector contributes to visitor numbers as well. However, the city’s hotel performance illustrates as well as anything the extent to which external factors can cause sharp tourism fluctuations from 1 year to the next.

Las Vegas: A Drop in Visitors

As one of the strongest tourism brands in the United States , Las Vegas suffered a setback in June 2025. The total number of visitors that year amounted to 3.09 million, a 11% drop in comparison to the preceding year. The average hotel occupancy rate remained just under 79%. Revenue per room dropped by 7% while RevPAR dropped by almost 14%.
The reduction in visitors has been attributed to weaker domestic travel and a softer convention calendar. While Las Vegas still retains its title as one of the top destinations in America, the downturn indicates that even the strongest players in the industry are vulnerable to demand cycle shifts. The aim now focuses on the second half of the calendar year, which has shown to increase demand due to the major shows and events planned for that time.

Los Angeles: Modest Gains but Competitive Pressure

By the first half of 2025, hotels in Los Angeles recorded an average of 72.5 occupancy and rates above 205 dollars. Though these were small increases, they prove that Los Angeles still trails behind other markets such as New York or Boston.
Los Angeles scales as a city poses a challenge. There are thousands of hotel rooms which means a small fall in demand can significantly impact sales. Other than the 2028 Olympics, Los Angeles is prisitioning itself for other global events. In the meantime however, Los Angeles competes with other destinations in California and across the country.

Other Cities Struggling

Certainly, some cities do lag behind. In June 2015, for example, Phoenix’s occupancy level barely reached 60%, while New Orleans was the bottom outlier amongst the 25 leading markets with a figure just below 54%. Such data points suggest the absence of a universal increase in demand for hotel accommodations in all destinations. Some cities are still in the process of reconstructing a stable demand attrition.
The schism in performance across US cities, as illustrated, is critical. It proves that tourism development and expansion is not uniformly distributed. There are markets that do extremely well, as well as those that do very poorly, while the average for the country conceals these disparities.

What These Shifts Mean for US Tourism

According to the shifts seen in 2025 there are three clear changges. First, across the country, extensive hotel tend to charge the same rates as they did during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in addition to fetching 20% more in-room rates, which are far higher than the rates charged before the pandemic. Although this improves tax revenue, it can also lead to a visitor market that is underserved. Second, there is a plateau in the growth of occupancy in several new emerging markets. In fact, ice the advanced cities of the world, a significant proportion of the population is t matter, which contributes a lot to the advanced world before the pandemic. Third, the recovery of tourism is still, to a large extent, and event tourism is the primary reason why cities with large event calendars are thriving.
The impact on the local economy is significant. Public spending is partly financed by tax collection on hotels. However, visitor amenities may suffer neglect is the flow of visitors stagnates or drops.

Looking Ahead to the Rest of 2025

Due to half-year uncertainty San Diego and Los Angles will ease their reliance focus on regional tourism and events. Las Vegas will shift recovery focus to conventions and entertainment. Boston and New york will continue utilizing their pricing power. Miami will focus on restoring balance between international and domestic travelers. Houston’s negative comparisons will continue to slow growth. In cont rest, Phoenix and New Orleans will need to re-strategize on boosting their demand.
Across the country, the outlooks predict the incoming year to be stagnated at best, projecting growth to be considerably slow than the year 2022 and 2023. This indicates that the travel and tourism sector in the US, despite being robust and immensely powerful, is entering a slower cycle.
San Diego joins New York City, Boston, Miami, Houston, Las Vegas and more US cities in battling tourism shifts during mid-year 2025 as rising hotel prices, falling occupancies, and shifting visitor flows reshape the travel economy. These pressures explain why major US destinations are adjusting strategies to protect revenue and sustain growth.

Conclusion

By mid-2025, San Diego, too, will have joined the ranks of other major U.S. cities in grappling with new challenges. This phenomenon is also the result of uneven progress. Some cities have inflated prices and stayed well above the competition in occupancy meanwhile others have enjoyed a drop in the number f visitors. All, however, are adapting to the new reality of tourism defined by high prices, slashed demand and fierce competition.
The traveler will now not only have a rich selection but will also have to pay a steep price. This is also a challenge for the city which must now be willing to spend money in anticipation of future global events that will enable growth. American tourism will continue to be the backbone of the US tourism industry, however, 2025 is also the year which will prove that the days of rapid recovery are behind us. The future is uncertain but one thing is for sure, the more cities are able to adjust to the new conditions the better the outcome will be.

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Tags: Boston, san diego, Tourism news, US

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