Los Angeles County hotels set new occupancy record in July

Hotels in Los Angeles County enjoyed record occupancy rates in July thanks to surging numbers of foreign and U.S. tourists, as well as growing convention and conference visitors.

The rate of occupied rooms in the county in July hit 83.9%, the highest for any month in the 25 years that the data has been collected, according to the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board.

The record rate marks the seventh straight month of year-over-year increases and represents the latest indication that tourism — one of the region’s biggest industries — is rebounding from the economic recession of recent years.

“People are traveling now,” said Mehdi Eftekari, general manager of the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. “We’ve had a lot of Europeans. We have Middle Eastern travelers and also people from the U.S. are traveling.”

For the first seven months of the year, hotel occupancy rates in the county were up 5% over the same period in 2011, and the tourism board forecasts that the county will welcome 41.33 million visitors this year, a 2.4% increase over last year.

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