China, Italy KPIs portend tough times for US hotels
The COVID-19 impact is now clearly visible in U.S. hotel performance metrics. For the week ending 14 March, revenue per available room declined 32.5%. It is fair to assume that this is the beginning of a long slide in demand and RevPAR as Americans practice social distancing and stay off the road.
Since the hotel performance impact has been visible longer in other countries around the world, STR can now overlay occupancy results for those markets to understand what might happen in the U.S. We chose China and Italy as base cases since in those countries lockdowns were in effect, decreasing travel demand to almost zero.