Much is still unknown about how the hotel industry will recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, but data is helping paint a picture of a recovery in which labor, market segmentation and profitability will all play factors.
“This is not a normal type of recession,” said Isaac Collazo, vice president of analytics at STR, CoStar’s hospitality analytics firm, during a general session titled “Plotting the path to recovery” at the Hotel Data Conference.
Monitoring hotel occupancy has been key in tracking the recovery, he said.
The number of hotels with occupancy at 60% or greater has been increasing over the summer months amid a surge in leisure travel demand, he said.
“This is not to say that we won’t see some changes over the next several weeks, but, overall, hotels have done pretty well over the last six to eight weeks,” he said.
Ali Hoyt, senior director of consulting at STR, said it’s no surprise that hotel demand has been driven by leisure travel, which is evident in comparing weekday versus weekend occupancy.
Weekday occupancy has grown by 26 percentage points since the beginning of 2021, whereas weekend occupancy has increased almost 40 percentage points.
“We know the leisure traveler has been fueling the recovery, but we really need those business transient travelers to fill those midweek hotel rooms, particularly after Labor Day,” she said.
Not only have leisure travelers been boosting occupancy, they’ve also helped pump up rates, Collazo said.
Indexed to 2019 and adjusted for inflation, average daily rate has been at 2019 levels for some time, he said.
Hoyt said one of the bright spots in recovery is even though luxury hotels have been operating at a much lower occupancy than normal, rates have consistently been surpassing 2019 levels during 2021.
