The U.S. hotel industry saw double-digit occupancy and revenue per available room decreases in each of STR’s top 25 markets last week, according to the organization. Year-over-year, U.S. occupancy dropped 24.4 percent to 53 percent, average daily rate fell 10.7 percent to $120.30 and RevPAR plummeted 32.5 percent to $63.74 for the week of March 8 to 14.
STR noted these performance declines were uniform across chain scales, classes and location types. According to Jan Freitag, STR’s SVP of lodging insights, performance declines were especially pronounced at properties that cater to meetings and group business.
“The questions we are hearing the most right now are around how far occupancy will drop and how long this will last,” Freitag said in a statement. “Through comparative analysis of the occupancy trends in China and Italy over the past weeks, we can with certainty say that we are not yet close to the bottom in the U.S. However, the timeline for that decline and the eventual recovery are much tougher to predict because there is still so much uncertainty around the COVID-19 case numbers in the U.S. and how serious citizens are when practicing social distancing. China and Italy saw a more abrupt decline in occupancy because of stricter lockdowns. That will dictate the speed of recovery.”
Of STR's top 25 markets, Seattle saw the steepest decline in each of the three metrics. Occupancy fell by 55 percent to 32.9 percent, ADR dropped 24.7 percent to $109.28 and RevPAR plummeted 66.1 percent to $35.97.
San Francisco/San Mateo, Calif., posted the second-largest drops: RevPAR fell 63.3 percent to $68.56, occupancy dropped 51.6 percent to 38.9 percent and ADR was down 24.2 percent at $176.38.
New York City experienced the third-largest declines in occupancy (-43.9 percent to 48.8 percent) and RevPAR (-54.6 percent to $88.29). New Orleans saw the third-largest ADR drop (-22.8 percent to $138.11).