BERLIN — Much like the recovery seen already in the U.S., the rebound of travel in Europe is being led by leisure-driven markets and destinations that have been more eager to relax pandemic-era restrictions.

Robin Rossmann, managing director of STR, said that while the U.K. has seen a "stronger, faster recovery" — recording occupancy at roughly 87% of pre-pandemic levels in April — he's confident the rest of Europe isn't far behind.

Rossmann said he's bullish on a quick rebound for European markets that are largely dependent on international travel.

"By the time we get to the middle of May, a lot of these European gateway cities will be 90% to 100% recovered to 2019 levels," he said, speaking during the "Decoding the Data" session at the 2022 International Hospitality Investment Forum.

It's been a tale of two recoveries when it comes to segmentation, with economy hotels leading the way on demand recovery and luxury hotels driving up rate at the highest clip, he said, adding he'd rather be on the luxury side of the equation if he were investing.

"In this environment, I'd far rather have robustness on rate rather than occupancy to combat inflation," he said.

STR is CoStar's hospitality analytics firm.

But panelists noted that just because travelers are coming, it doesn't mean things are exactly as they were in 2019.

Giorgio Manenti, managing director for Eastdil Secured, said he's seeing different patterns for business travelers even when overall demand number rebound.

"We were talking to some corporates that have a huge amount of travel that is based on project work, and what they were saying is, 'We're traveling the same [number of] days; we're just traveling different,'" he said. "So the airline industry is suffering, but not hospitality so much."

Manenti said in this circumstance, business travelers will still be on the road for 60 days overall, like they would have been prior to the pandemic, but will do that in three 20-day trips rather than 20 three-day trips.

"So it's the same [roomnights] with less travel," he said. "I thought that was really interesting and actually pretty positive for us."

Michael Grove, chief operating officer for Hotstats, said hoteliers need to keep in mind that it's still unclear just what the business mix will look like once the industry is once again in a full-blown upcycle.

"It's still a bit unknown whether these segments will return in their entirety or in the way that they looked before," he said. "I think there are new segments rearing their heads, which is something that's quite interesting. People are having to adapt to a new world where Zoom is now an option."

He also said that while hoteliers are celebrating wins in ADR, they also need to be mindful of cost increases, both from operations and from governments that will be easing back on pandemic-era assistance.

"Much of Europe had some sort of [value-added tax] reduction or sales tax reduction during the pandemic to assist hotels. ... And as now that has wound up, there is a risk going forward that some of that will see some deflation in the rate," he said.

Speaking with HNN during IHIF, Rossmann said the recovery is truly gaining steam now after some false starts in 2021 and early in 2022.

"It's been a stormy couple of years," he said. "We've had our hopes up a couple times in the summer months when we saw leisure demand pick up the recovery first in the summer of 2020, a little bit, then in the summer of 2021, a lot, but every time that's happened, we've had a new strain come through that's derailed the recovery.

He said the hotel industry has seemingly broken that cycle.

"As we progress through 2022, we've seen the recovery get stronger and stronger," Rossmann said.

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