Recovery Key Indicators: What to Look Out for in Your Market

Recovery Key Indicators

We have been monitoring markets affected by COVID-19 since the early days of the outbreak, and we've focused on a few key indicators to help you understand when your market is headed for recovery. We will be introducing and analyzing these indicators over the next few weeks.

Let's take a look at three of them today: cancellations by cancel dates, stay date, and booking pace. To keep most up to date on how these indicators are tracking, check in to our live dashboards here.

CANCELLATIONS by Cancel Date

As soon as COVID-19 cases began to rise, cancellations surged by over 10x normal pace, signaling a weakening in travel confidence. While we have seen the pace of cancellation decelerate to 1-2x weekly averages, as markets issue new shelter-in-place or travel restriction orders, the pace may increase.

Always be aware of your markets' travel restrictions and shelter-in-place orders, as increases in either will precede an uptick in cancellations.

CANCELLATIONS by Check-in DateWe can also draw insight from analyzing the stay dates on cancelled reservations to measure how uncertain guests are about their ability to fulfill their future travel plans. For most of the U.S., we have not seen many reservations cancelled past early summer. As this is a fluid situation, monitoring how far out guests are cancelling reservations is another main indicator to gauge consumer confidence moving forward.

BOOKING PACE

While cancellation data can help give insight into how optimistic guests are about fulfilling future travel plans, new bookings are also a key measure of guest confidence. As long as there is uncertainty surrounding the future ability to travel to and from most markets, we can expect booking pace to remain slow. Guests are making very few bookings farther out, and most bookings are made less than seven (7) days prior to arrival, as a result of COVID-19.