Hilton Worldwide currently estimates its systemwide first-quarter comparable revenue per available room to have declined between 22 percent and 24 percent year over year, according to a Thursday company filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Hilton estimated March systemwide RevPAR to be down between 56 percent to 58 percent. The results are preliminary and unaudited and may change by the time the company holds its first-quarter earnings call, the date of which has not yet been announced.
Regionally, Hilton expects first-quarter Asia/Pacific RevPAR to be down 43 percent to 45 percent year over year, and down 74 percent to 76 percent in March, despite some early signs of recovery in the region, particularly in China. Hilton's occupancy in China currently stands at approximately 22 percent, up from 9 percent in early February, and with more than 130 of the nearly 150 hotels in China that had been closed now reopened. Preliminary first-quarter RevPAR results for the Americas as well as Europe, the Middle East and Africa are down 20 percent to 22 percent for both regions. For March, EMEA is anticipated to show slightly worse results than the Americas, with RevPAR down 62 percent to 64 percent compared with a decline in the Americas of 54 percent to 56 percent.
As of April 14, Hilton has temporarily closed nearly 1,000 hotels, or approximately 16 percent of its global inventory. Regionally, that amounts to 12 percent of hotels in the Americas, 60 percent of the hotels in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and 15 percent of Asia/Pacific hotels. The company noted in the filing that it was "not able to estimate the date that these suspensions of hotel operations will be lifted."