HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee—As hotel occupancy in Europe and China continues to grow at a steady pace, U.S. hotels “barely missed the half-full” mark for the week ending 8 August, according to STR’s SVP of lodging insights Jan Freitag.
STR is the parent company of Hotel News Now.
In his latest weekly video on insights into U.S. hotel performance data, Freitag said U.S. occupancy hit 49.9% last week, and China (at 63%) continues its “sharp acceleration in occupancies and room demand.”
Source: STR, © 2020 CoStar Realty Information, Inc.
As the pace of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. slows down, revenue per available room for the week ending 8 August “stood for the first time in a long time at better than -50%, just barely, but this is probably a trend that we will continue to see all the way through August,” Freitag said.
Source: STR, © 2020 CoStar Realty Information, Inc.
The improved RevPAR percent change indicates the number of rooms sold is also increasing, he said. U.S. hotels last week reported just over 18 million room nights sold as the number of people flying also trends upward.
However, “the ratio of the number of people flying vs. total number of rooms sold has really not changed very much. It’s roughly around 30%,” Freitag said.
Weekend occupancies and room demand also continue to show healthy percentages, with just under six out of 10 rooms sold at U.S. hotels for the week ending 8 August, he said.
As in previous months, states out West did particularly well in terms of occupancy for the week ending 8 August. South Dakota stood out due to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which started on 7 August and will last 10 days. Freitag said 250,000 people are expected to attend.
“You already see in the first two days of the 10-day event that occupancies and RevPARs were lifted. We saw for the week RevPAR was up 17% and ADR was up (11.4%),” he said.
Conventions
Las Vegas recently published its convention attendance for June, and for the third-consecutive month it stood at zero, Freitag said.
Freitag said total U.S. group occupancy stood at 5%.
“So yes, there are very, very small groups in some areas, but certainly not in Las Vegas,” he said.
For more from Freitag’s weekly update, watch the video below:
Editor’s note: The video included in this article was filmed by Jan Freitag, SVP of lodging insights at STR, on 12 August and edited and produced by CoStar Group. HNN is a division of STR, a CoStar Group company.