The coronavirus outbreak continues to spell negative results for the U.S. hotel industry. First-quarter reports were down for all three key performance metrics, according to STR. Occupancy for the three-month period ending March 31 declined 15.9 percent year over year to 51.8 percent. Average daily rate dropped 4 percent to $123.76. Revenue per available room declined 19.3 percent to $64.14.
The absolute occupancy level was the lowest for the industry since the time of the global financial crisis in the first quarter of 2009. The year-over-year decline in the metric was the worst for any quarter on the company's record.
Among the top 25 markets, San Francisco/San Mateo reported the steepest decline in occupancy (down 24.9 percent), which resulted in the largest decline in RevPAR (down 29.9 percent).
For the week ending April 18, things look considerably worse. Compared with the week ending April 20, 2019, occupancy fell 64.4 percent to 23.4 percent. ADR dropped 42.2 percent to $74.53. RevPAR was down 79.4 percent to 17.43. This was the first time in four weeks that the weekly RevPAR decline did not set a new record.
"Absolute occupancy and ADR were actually up slightly from the previous week, but it is important to state that this is not any type of early-recovery sign," said STR SVP of lodging insights Jan Freitag. "Rather, more demand can be attributed to frontline workers. A perfect example, the most notable occupancy level (33.3 percent) came in the New York City market, which has welcomed an influx of workers from the medical community."
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