A Glimmer of Hope Amidst a Hemorrhage
Cornell Hotel Indices—Fourth Quarter 2020
By Crocker Liu, Robert A. Beck Professor of Hospitality Financial Management and Adam D. Nowak, Assistant Professor at West Virginia University and Robert M. White, Founder and President of Real Capital Analytics Inc



Prices of hotels along the east coast continue to drop, although the rate of decline has moderated. Hotels on the west coast enjoyed positive price momentum, both on a quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year basis. Hotels in gateway cities exhibited poorer price performance than those in non-gateway cities. Our moving average trendlines and standardized unexpected price performance metrics indicate a positive price reversal for large hotels, while the hemorrhaging continues for small hotels. There are indications that lenders are more willing to finance hotels going beyond best-in-class hotel properties, although the cost of financing and the relative risk premium remain high. This is report number 37 of the index series.

Crocker Liu
Crocker H. Liu is the Robert A. Beck Professor of Hospitality Financial Management and a professor of real estate at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. He previously taught at New York University's Stern School of Business (1988-2006), where he was the associate director of real estate, and more recently at Arizona State University's W.
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Adam D. Nowak
Adam D. Nowak is an associate professor of economics at West Virginia University. He earned degrees in mathematics and economics at Indiana University – Bloomington in 2006 and a degree in near-east languages and cultures that same year. He received a Ph.D. from Arizona State University. He was the research analyst in charge of constructing residential and commercial real estate indices for the enter for Real Estate Theory and Practice at Arizona State University.
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Robert M. White
Robert M. White, Jr., CRE, is the founder and president of Real Capital Analytics Inc., an international research firm that publishes the Capital Trends Monthly. Real Capital Analytics provides real time data concerning the capital markets for commercial real estate and the values of commercial properties.
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