U.S. revenue per available room dropped 11.6 percent year-over-year to $77.82 for the week of March 1 to 7, reflecting concerns and cancellations around the COVID-19 outbreak, according to STR.
Compared to the week of March 3 to 9, 2019, occupancy fell 7.3 percent to 61.8 percent and average daily rate decreased 4.6 percent to $126.01.
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“The question over the last several weeks was ‘when,’ not ‘if’ this impact would hit—well, when has arrived,” Jan Freitag, STR’s senior VP of lodging insights, said in a statement. “Like so many other areas of the world, concerns around the coronavirus outbreak have now hit U.S. hotel occupancy hard. Not a surprise given the amount of event-related news we have seen, but group cancellations were felt across the markets and classes in addition to consistent declines in the transient segment. ADR is starting to decline as well, rapidly in the case of San Francisco. This is quite likely the beginning of a bad run that will get worse before it gets better.”
Twenty-three of the top 25 markets registered a RevPAR decline. San Francisco/San Mateo, Calif., posted the week’s steepest drop in RevPAR (-45.5 percent), largely due to the largest decline in ADR (-30.4 percent). Anaheim/Santa Ana, Calif., experienced the largest decline in occupancy (-27.3 percent) and second-largest decreases in ADR (-19.9 percent) and RevPAR (-41.8 percent). Seattle saw the second-steepest drop in occupancy (-26.4 percent) and third-largest decline in RevPAR (-34.8 percent).
On the East Coast, occupancy in New York City fell 13.1 percent, while ADR dipped 8.3 percent.
Two markets experienced YOY occupancy growth for the week: Detroit (1.9 percent) and Nashville (1.8 percent). Two markets reported ADR increases: Oahu Island, Hawaii (1.7 percent) and Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Va. (1.3 percent).