Showing further COVID-19 impact, the U.S. hotel industry reported negative year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 8-14 March 2020, according to data from STR.

In comparison with the week of 10-16 March 2019, the industry recorded the following:

  • Occupancy: -24.4% to 53.0%
  • Average daily rate (ADR): -10.7% to US$120.30
  • Revenue per available room (RevPAR): -32.5% to US$63.74

Performance declines were uniform across chain scales, classes and location types.

"To no surprise, the hurt continued and intensified for hotels around the country," said Jan Freitag, STR's senior VP of lodging insights. "The performance declines were especially pronounced in hotels that cater to meetings and group business, which is a reflection of the latest batch of event cancellations and government guidance to restrict the size of gatherings.

"The questions we are hearing the most right now are around how far occupancy will drop and how long this will last. Through comparative analysis of the occupancy trends in China and Italy over the past weeks, we can with certainty say that we are not yet close to the bottom in the U.S. However, the timeline for that decline and the eventual recovery are much tougher to predict because there is still so much uncertainty around the COVID-19 case numbers in the U.S. and how serious citizens are when practicing social distancing. China and Italy saw a more abrupt decline in occupancy because of stricter lockdowns. That will dictate the speed of recovery."

Each of the Top 25 Markets registered double-digit occupancy and RevPAR decreases. ADR was also down in each market.

Seattle, Washington, saw the steepest declines in each of the three key performance metrics: occupancy (-55.0% to 32.9%), ADR (-24.7% to US$109.28) and RevPAR (-66.1% to US$35.97).

San Francisco/San Mateo, California, posted the week's second-largest drop in RevPAR (-63.3% to US$68.56), due to the second-steepest decreases in occupancy (-51.6% to 38.9%) and ADR (-24.2% to US$176.38).

New York, New York, experienced the third-largest declines in occupancy (-43.9% to 48.8%) and RevPAR (-54.6% to US$88.29).

New Orleans, Louisiana, posted the third-steepest drop in ADR (-22.8% to US$138.11)

About STR

STR provides premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for the global hospitality industry. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 15 countries with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, an international headquarters in London, and an Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. STR was acquired in October 2019 by CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. For more information, please visit str.com and costargroup.com.