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1. Delayed Projects Push California Hotel Development to Record Last Year
New hotel rooms opening in California surpassed 2019's record levels in 2021, fueled in part by projects that were deferred from 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, HNN's Bryan Wroten reports.
According to the California Hotel Development Survey 2021 Year-End from Atlas Hospitality Group, 12,027 new guestrooms opened in California last year, beating out 2019’s record 11,795. Eighty-eight hotels opened last year, second only to 2019’s 92.
“Truth be told, it would not be a record year if we were in a non-COVID year,” Atlas Hospitality President Alan Reay said. “There was an incredible amount of product that opened up in the first quarter of 2021 just because it was it was delayed from 2020.”
2. Weekly Jobless Claims See Big Jump
Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows new claims for unemployment benefits spiked to 286,000 for the week ending Jan. 15, which economists tie to "omicron-related disruptions," The Wall Street Journal reports.
The jump isn't enough to signify a shift in the overall trends for the labor market, though.
“As we have gotten lower and lower in jobless claims, we should expect some volatility,” said Nela Richardson, an economist at Automatic Data Processing Inc. “It’s never a straight line.”
3. Saudi Arabia Converting Palaces to Hotels
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has launched a new company called Boutique Group with the intention of converting the country's palaces into "opulent hotels," Reuters reports.
The first converted properties will be Jeddah's Al Hamra Palace and Riyadh's Tuwaiq Palace and Red Palace, and each site will have 244 rooms, suites and villas.
The effort is part of the country's overall plan to increase tourism's contribution to overall gross-domestic-product growth, aiming for a 10% of GDP related to travel by 2030.
4. Sonder Goes Public Via SPAC Merger
Alternative-accommodations provider Sonder debuted on the Nasdaq Global Select Market yesterday after going public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Gores Metropoulos II, Inc., according to a news release. The company will now trade under the ticker symbol "SOND."
As of press time, the company's stock was trading at $8.41 a share.
5. US Hotels Saw 83% Increase in 2021 RevPAR
Not surprisingly, U.S. hotels enjoyed massive year-over-year increases in key performance metrics in 2021 compared to a pandemic-affected 2020, the latest data from CoStar's hospitality analytics firm STR shows. Revenue per available room was up 83.2% in that period.
Comparisons with 2019 are still considerably less rosy, though. While rate was down only 4.8%, a 12.6% drop in occupancy pushed down RevPAR by a combined 16.8%. Despite the drop, 2021 saw the fourth-highest nominal ADR on record.