Hospitality reports point to uptick in hotel activity

Two of the latest hospitality industry reports, one from RateGain in collaboration with IDeaS and HSMAI, and the other from STR, both hint at slight increases in demand in markets around the world.

RateGain’s second COVID19 Report tracks room reservations and cancellations trends from more than 20 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. 

From April 12 to April 18, 18 of the 20 countries showed a week-over-week increase in reservations, ranging from increases in the 60% range for countries such as Oman, Argentina and Czech Republic to an increase of 17% in the United States and 5% in the United Kingdom, Thailand and Vietnam.

“We considered all the bookings made during the week for any future date, to do this analysis. While the increase is not much as compared to the loss, an uptick gives us a direction to think,” the report states.

STR’s report looks at occupancy during the week of April 19 to 25. In that period in the U.S., absolute occupancy rose slightly to 26%, up from 23.4% and 21% the two prior weeks. 

“Demand has grown slightly across the country during the last two weeks, which could provide some hope that the levels seen in early April were indeed the bottom - especially with some states now moving to ease social distancing guidance,” says Jan Freitag, STR’s senior vice president of lodging insights. 

“The 1.4 million additional room nights sold the last two weeks only represent around 100,000 new rooms occupied per night, but gains even that small are certainly better than further declines. 

STR says five states – California, Texas, New York, Florida and George – represent 40% of the demand gain in the last two weeks. But Freitag says it's important to consider that part of the increased business is coming from essential workers, homeless housing initiatives and government-contracted guests. 

For Europe, Freitag says occupancy is up to 11.6% from a low of 7% a few weeks earlier. And in China, occupancy is also slowly increasing, now above 35% with some markets showing the most activity on weekends.