According to new data released today by hospitality analytics company STR, and as reported by CNN, less than 22 percent of U.S. hotel rooms were occupied during the week between March 29 and April 4, 2020, representing a 68-percent drop in comparison to the same week in 2019.
The average daily rate (ADR) also decreased nearly 42 percent to $76.51 and revenue per available room (RevPAR) dropped by just under 82 percent to $16.50 when compared to the same period last year.
A continued downward trend indicates that things could continue to worsen for the hotel industry in the coming weeks. "Data worsened a bit from last week, and certain patterns were extended around occupancy," said Jan Freitag, STR's senior VP of lodging insights.
Compared with the week prior, "Economy hotels continued to run the highest occupancy, while interstate and suburban properties once again posted the top occupancy rates among location types," Freitag said. "This shows there are still pockets of demand while more than 75 percent of the rooms around the country are empty."
Some markets, however, are faring worse than others. The island of Oahu, Hawaii, is suffering the most drastic decrease in occupancy, down almost 91 percent from last year and with only seven percent of its hotel rooms in use during the sample week. That's the only single-digit occupancy level to be recorded among all U.S. markets.
In the same week, hotel occupancy levels in New York City had fallen more than 79 percent from last year to just over 18 percent; and Seattle, Washington, saw its occupancy drop by 73 percent to under 20 percent.
At this point, the effects of this pandemic are palpable, and market conditions continue to prove volatile and virtually unpredictable.
With many hotels having either completely shut down their operations or functioning with skeleton crews, CNN lately reported on opinions from industry experts that many hotels simply won't survive the unprecedented downturn.
An Oxford Economics study also forecasted that 44 percent of hotel employees across every state stand to lose their jobs because of the pandemic, with many already having been laid off or furloughed until the crisis abates.
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