Skift Travel News Blog

How are hotels doing post-pandemic? It all depends on the market and the type of hotel. In the U.S., average hotel rates nationwide have barely recovered to 2019 levels after accounting for inflation, but individual markets like New York City are performing better than before, while other individual markets, like San Francisco, are doing worse. But overall, it’s not price gouging.

In Europe, there’s a similar market-by-market dynamic at work. In the highest-demand markets for leisure travelers, especially Americans, hotels have been able to hike prices above inflation.

An article in Friday’s Financial Times had a compelling chart to make the point.

“Hotels in London, Rome, Madrid and Paris are enjoying a boom even when compared with the pre-pandemic era. Revenue per available room rose the most of the four cities in Rome, where it was 60 per cent higher in June than in the same month in 2019, according to hotel data provider STR.”

—Eri Sugiura and Robert Wright of the Financial Times

Rising hotel room rates in the U.S. are still contributing to an overall rise in the national cost of living, but the pace of hotel rate hikes is slowing, according to new numbers released on Tuesday.

Hotel rates rose 1.8% in May from April, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported the seasonally adjusted percentage changes.

Looking longer-term, rates in May were 3% higher than a year earlier. That’s a much lower annualized inflation rate than the 22.2% a year ago.

The government also provided an update on recent monthly hotel rate changes: Rates dropped 3% in April versus March. Rates rose 2.7% between February and March.

The backstory is an overall moderation in the recent bout of inflation. The hotel sector has seen dramatic spikes in nightly rates compared to post-pandemic lows, as rises in demand collided with strained supply from properties struggling to find and keep workers.

“In the U.S., the average daily rate on a real basis is a dollar off where we were in March 2019,” said Amanda Hite, president of STR, the leader in hotel performance benchmarking, in an interview last week. “So for all the price growth we’ve seen, we aren’t back to where we were pre-pandemic, on average overall.”

The government data includes “lodging away from home including hotels and motels” but excludes lodging at schools and is based on survey data.

For more context, read: “Hotel CEOs Are Loving Limited Rooms and High Prices.”

Despite the fears of recession and soaring fuel prices that have retreated somewhat in recent weeks, average daily rates for short-term rentals in the U.S. this summer jumped 7 percent year over year — and that’s nearly 30 percent higher than the summer of pre-pandemic 2019.

Those conclusions were part of an update to AirDNA’s mid-year 2022 outlook, which said U.S. average daily rate growth is highest in urban and coastal areas. (See chart below).

“As we look to summer 2022 (June-August), more STR nights have been booked than any other summer in history, as of the end of June,” the report said. “The previous record was set just last year, and the U.S. is currently seeing 12.3% more booked nights than at the same point in time in 2021.”

Short-term rental demand in big cities this summer, though, is still 28.3 percent lower than in the summer of 2019, AirDNA found.

In addition, AirDNA forecast that the U.S. supply of short-term rentals would jump 21 percent year-over-year in 2022 as both Airbnb and Vrbo increased their listings.

“With supply outpacing demand growth as expected, our outlook for occupancy is largely unchanged,” AirDNA said. “Our revised forecast now calls for U.S. occupancy to average 58.2% for the year, slightly lower than our 59.8% forecast in October.”

AirDNA’s occupancy numbers seems to be more bullish than those of Key Data Dashboard. The latter’s occupancy stats may skew more heavily toward vacation rentals specifically.

Occupancy rates in the U.S. in the third quarter (July, August and September) are currently at 39 percent, down from 45 percent during the same period in a standout 2021, according to Melanie Brown, director of analytics at Key Data Dashboard, which tracks vacation rental data.

Amadeus said on Wednesday that it had launched a market forecast capability “to help hoteliers accurately track revenue and manage costs.” The tool is part of its business intelligence software suite, RevenueStrategy360, for hotels that it expanded after its acquisition of TravelClick several years ago.

“Most tools today look at historical data, but ours focuses on forward-looking data,” said Katie Moro, vice president of data partnerships. “We track on-the-books reservations data from companies that both use our services and those that don’t. We blend it with historical seasonality and trends.”

Moro spoke from Orlando at the trade show HITEC (Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference).

More than half of hotel bookings are being made within a week of travel, Moro said, citing data for bookings being made across all channels for about 35,000 hotels globally using Amadeus’s business intelligence software. So many revenue managers at hotels have shorter windows to make decisions on rates, promotions, and allocating inventory.

Amadeus’ forward-looking data shows global hotel bookings are on par with 2019 and surging.

“We’re tracking on a weekly basis hotel reservations coming in, less cancellations,” Moro said. “For the week ending June 17, we saw an increase of about half a million reservations over the week prior. We had also seen a huge spike ahead of Memorial Day, so it’s possible this increased demand is for the July holidays.”