In what is expected to be the final month of this crisis, with significant year-on-year declines in key US hotel industry performance indicators, February’s KPIs improved month-over-month, and hotels in all three countries saw smaller year-on-year decreases using STR metrics.
The U.S. Covid-19 pandemic started fully in March 2020, making February the last month in which to make year-to-year comparisons before the pandemic.
Monthly U.S. hotel occupancy and revenue per available room rate in February were the highest since October 2020, while the STR’s average daily rate was the highest since September 2020.
The US occupancy rate in February fell year-on-year by 26.6 percent to 45.3 percent, an improvement on the January occupancy rate of 39.3 percent. ADR was down 24.8 percent compared to February 2020, but ADR of $ 98.31 in February 2021 was cheap compared to $ 90.79 in January. RevPAR fell 44.8 percent year-over-year to $ 44.57, but that, too, was an improvement from the previous month’s decline of 48.2 percent and $ 35.72.
The economy was the only chain scale that recorded an occupancy rate of over 50 percent (51.1 percent), but the upper middle classes (48.8 percent) and the upper middle classes (47 percent) were not far behind. Higher demands and luxury continued to have problems with occupancy in the low range of 30 percent. Occupancy by location is falling, and all but urban markets (37.8 percent) are at a level from 43.4 percent to 48.7 percent.
The top 25 markets continued to outperform all other markets that STR tracked year over year. In February, however, two destinations – Miami and Tampa – reported over 65 percent occupancy, with Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Phoenix seeing over 50 percent. This is comparable to just two markets over 50 percent in January. Tampa’s numbers were boosted by hosting the Super Bowl LV.
At 29.3 percent, Oahu was the only market with a load factor of less than 30 percent in February. The second worst performers were Minneapolis with 30.3 percent and Boston with 32.1 percent.
