US Hotels’ First Quarter and Weekly Metrics Continue to Fall

According to STR (Smith Travel Research), the U.S. hotel industry’s first-quarter 2020 numbers were down in all three key performance metrics, further attesting to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, reported Business Travel News.

For the three-month period ending March 31, 2020, hotel occupancy fell 15.9 percent year over year to 51.8 percent, average daily rate (ADR) dropped four percent to $123.76 and revenue per available room (RevPAR) declined by 19.3 percent to $64.14.

Reportedly, the absolute occupancy level represented the industry’s lowest since the global financial crisis’ impact on the first quarter of 2009. The metric’s year-over-year decline represented the worst for any quarter on STR’s record.

San Francisco/San Mateo saw the harshest drop in occupancy among the top 25 markets, down nearly 25 percent, which resulted in the steepest decline in RevPAR, almost 30 percent.

In particular, the week ending April 18 saw occupancy drop 64.4 percent to 23.4 percent, ADR fall 42.2 percent to $74.53 and RevPAR decline 79.4 percent to 17.43 when compared with the same period last year.

“Absolute occupancy and ADR were actually up slightly from the previous week, but it is important to state that this is not any type of early-recovery sign,” said STR’s Senior Vice President of Lodging Insights, Jan Freitag. “Rather, more demand can be attributed to frontline workers. A perfect example, the most notable occupancy level (33.3 percent) came in the New York City market, which has welcomed an influx of workers from the medical community.”