As anticipated based on the month's weekly reports, U.S. hotel performance took a sharp year-over-year dive in March, the first month that state and local governments in the U.S. ordered business closures and stay-at-home measures because of the coronavirus outbreak, according to STR.
Year-over-year U.S. occupancy fell 42.3 percent to 39.4 percent. Average daily rate dropped 16.5 percent to $110.66. Revenue per available room fell 51.9 percent to $43.54.
Among the top 25 markets, San Francisco/San Mateo reported the steepest year-over-year drop in occupancy (down 62.2 percent), which resulted in the largest decrease in RevPAR (down 72.3 percent). It tied with New Orleans for the biggest decline in ADR (down 26.6 percent).
March, however, represented a new monthly record for rooms under construction, at 215,000. The previous high was in December 2007, at 211,000. That number remained high during the 2007-08 recession but came down to 50,000 by May 2011, as projects that had broken ground continued but those in the planning stages were shelved, explained STR SVP of lodging insights Jan Freitag during an April 16 webinar.
He further showed that projects that moved from the final planning stage to deferred status increased from seven in February to nine in March, while those in the planning stage that moved to deferred went from one in February to 21 in March. For abandoned projects, those in the planning stage went from two in February to seven in March.
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