The hotel industry has had a horrible blow that, like every other sector of the travel industry, will take a long, long time to recover from. Although more people are willing to travel than, say, 2 months ago, the number of hotel rooms being filled is still pretty dismal, especially when you compare year-to-year numbers. So every little percentage point of occupancy is celebrated.
Such is the case of Marriott, who recently reached a new occupancy rate high point since the Novel 2019 Coronavirus flipped the world as we knew it upside down.
20 percent.
And nope, that’s not a typo. Marriott’s U.S.-based hotels recently reached the twenty percent occupancy mark.
“It’s a meaningful improvement from where we were, but it is a long way from where we need to get to,” said Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson, speaking at a Goldman Sachs Travel and Leisure Conference.
Sorenson added that over the last six weeks, hotels in the U.S. are adding “a point and a half or so of incremental occupancy every week.” This was shown in this post from mid-May, where we showed how occupancy rates had increased over the previous 5 weeks.
Marriott’s strongest markets right now are the ones with leisure activities and that are a distance that is easily driven to by travelers. But Sorenson also said that drive-to business travel is starting to increase in some markets. Extended-stay brands are doing particularly well, in that respect, “were occupancy can be in the mid-30s to mid-40s. The Residence Inn brand would be performing better than the Courtyard brand,” as per Sorenson.
Many markets look to China, which is roughly 3 months ahead of the U.S. in terms of post-COVID activities, as a roadmap of what to expect. In China, all 350 of Marriott’s hotels are now open, and their occupancy recently crossed the 40 percent mark (they were about 7 or 8 percent in late January/early February). Sorensen added that, like us, China’s travel market is generally domestic right now, and include a mixture of both leisure and business travel.
So yeah, 20%. Marriott’s global occupancy rate in 2019 was 71%. So you can see they have a long way to go.
In other news, last week Marriott announced they were extending their furloughs. No surprise there, huh?
#stayhealthy #staysafe #washyourhands
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
