Omicron Variant Expected To Have Little Impact on US Hotel Demand
Forward Bookings Drop in Other Parts of the World
Preliminary performance data from CoStar hospitality analytics firm STR shows no impact from the emerging COVID-19 omicron variant on U.S. hotel demand, and patterns suggest any impact in the future will be minimal, according to Jan Freitag, national director for hospitality analytics at CoStar.
"If preliminary news holds and the strain is more contagious but less impactful for people who have received their booster shot, then we expect little impact on the U.S. travel industry," he said in his latest video analysis of the monthly hotel data.
"If we learned one thing from the summers of 2020 and 2021, it is that the American leisure consumer loves hitting the road, no matter the COVID case counts. This was clearly seen in the Thanksgiving data this year which, according to STR, was the single strongest Thanksgiving week ever recorded," he added.
