The 2020 performance of several hotel markets around the globe illustrates how different regions fared in the first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of the Hotel Data Conference Global Edition, research analysts from STR — CoStar's hospitality analytics firm — presented data on five markets as part of the Market Spotlight series.

Patricia Boo, area director for Central and South America at STR, said hotels in Lima, Peru, reported higher occupancy levels in 2020, outpacing the rest of the major markets in South America.

"During 2020, Lima led occupancy in the region and presented some of the highest occupancies around the world with consistent levels of demand resulting in occupancy between 40% and 50% throughout the pandemic," Boo said. "2020, as we can see, closed with a 44% occupancy. And that's approximately 20 points ahead of most markets."

While some Lima hotels temporarily closed in the spring of 2020, by January 2021, 94% of Lima's hotel rooms have reopened, Boo said.

Similar to other global markets, Lima's luxury and upper upscale properties experienced the largest decreases in occupancy, average daily rate and revenue per available room in 2020.

But on the bright side, Lima's hotels posted an increase in group occupancy during the year, primarily due to the mining industry and other infrastructure projects, Boo said. However, group ADR declined more year over year than the rate declines in transient and contract demand, which seems to suggest hotels that were open and booking groups "traded off ADR for occupancy," she added.

About half of hotels in New York City closed their doors as the pandemic gained momentum in March 2020, and throughout the year, hotel demand in the Big Apple fluctuated as COVID-19 cases rose, lockdowns were enacted and first responders and the homeless were housed in hotels.

Ryan Lynch, business development executive, industry partners at STR, said there was a noticeable gap in New York weekday and weekend hotel demand starting in the summer months.

"After many of those additional medical professionals returned home, demand fell through the summer months, but in July, we can see the weekday and weekend trends start to separate themselves," Lynch said. "With some leisure travel, we see the weekend trend lines start to increase while the weekday demand — which is normally consistent of mostly business travelers — start to level off around 37% and continued to decline from there.

Lynch said it's likely New York's hotels will experience higher weekend demand in 2021, adding "business travel is going to take longer to recover."

Perhaps more than any other major market, New York City's hotel supply could look the most different after COVID-19. Lynch said permanent closings and asset sales are two big factors in speculating about what New York's supply will be post-pandemic.

"We've seen 263 hotels in New York City close their doors, and since then, only 178 have reopened, leaving about 30% of the available supply still offline," he said. "Now most of those 30% will hopefully open throughout 2021. But unfortunately, not every hotel is going to be able to reopen and even more will reopen with a different owner."

The pandemic has dealt an arguably bigger blow to Africa, which features many hotel markets that are still emerging. Thomas Emanuel, director at STR, said markets in North Africa experienced some of the worst declines in occupancy in 2020.

"Occupancy has declined across the board, but they were higher in northern African markets ranging from 58% declines in Casablanca, up to 72% declines in Marrakesh," Emanuel said. "At the other end of the spectrum, however, we have Lagos who still benefited from oil business and long-stay business associated with that. And also Addis Ababa, the diplomatic capital of the continent, which enjoyed diplomatic business throughout 2020."

Despite the smaller footprint of hotels in Africa, global brands are increasing their reach on the continent.

"If we go back just a decade to 2012, you can see that there were 18 countries with no globally branded hotels at all," he said. "If we fast-forward to today, that number is just seven. And of those seven, only five have no branded hotels whatsoever, which also indicates the strength and the growth of domestic African operators."

Australia has had fewer numbers of COVID-19 cases but tighter border restrictions and lockdowns since the start of the global pandemic. Matthew Burke, regional manager, Pacific at STR, said hotels in Australia's capital cities went from being "powerhouse performers to the laggards" when compared to regional markets in 2020.

But the difference in hotel size and location hasn't been as stark of an impact on performance, Burke said.

"When breaking down performance and contemplating that in a low demand market it would adversely impact larger hotels, I was surprised to see that in the capital cities, there was a marginal variation in occupancy performance for the year, which to me highlights that larger properties have been as nimble as smaller properties, and the cuts to demand segments have been across all sectors. No one has been spared," Burke said.

"I anticipate through the recovery, we may see some variations to performance as different segments recover faster than others. For example, larger properties may lag with their traditionally strong emphasis on group meeting demand."

The United Kingdom has imposed three COVID-19 lockdowns since the start of the pandemic. Michal Rao, business development manager for the U.K. and Ireland at STR, said the significant hotel occupancy declines after the March 2020 lockdown was imposed haven't materialized with the second two lockdowns.

"In March, we saw much sharper declines in occupancy, plummeting from about 45% down to the low teens and then stabilizing about a month in. ... As we went into lockdown No. 2 in November, we were coming off a lower base from about 30% [occupancy], and we saw declines but not as steep as we saw earlier in the year," he said.

The third lockdown in the U.K. started in January 2021, and "we didn't see much effect there because London was already in Tier 4 that had very similar restrictions to what lockdown restrictions are right now," he said.