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The U.S. hotel industry reported mostly negative year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 16-22 February 2020, according to data from STR.

In comparison with the week of 17-23 February 2019, the industry recorded the following:

  • Occupancy: -2.1% to 63.2%
  • Average daily rate (ADR): +0.7% to US$130.55
  • Revenue per available room (RevPAR): -1.4% to US$82.55

Of note, U.S. airport hotels reported a 4.8% decrease in occupancy for the week, which was the steepest decline among all location types tracked by STR. The decline was steeper in airport markets outside of the country’s 10 busiest.

“The obvious question is whether a dip in demand in airport hotels was directly connected to the coronavirus outbreak,” said Jan Freitag, STR’s senior VP of lodging insights. “However, one week of data is not sufficient for STR to make that correlation, especially considering last week was rather weak around the country in general—possibly due to extended vacations after Presidents’ Day.

“We’ve maintained that we do expect to see a coronavirus impact in U.S. hotel performance data, especially in gateway cities that have historically seen a large number of Chinese arrivals. We’ll continue to monitor the data each week. The next few weeks will be especially interesting considering the news to come out of the CDC on Tuesday.”

Among the Top 25 Markets, San Francisco/San Mateo, California, saw the largest drop in RevPAR (-21.8% to US$131.27), due to the only double-digit decreases in occupancy (-10.9% to 69.2%) and ADR (-12.3% to US$189.59).

Houston, Texas, posted the second-steepest declines in ADR (-8.5% to US$102.03) and RevPAR (-13.3% to US$66.77).

Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota-Wisconsin, experienced the second-largest decrease in occupancy (-9.3% to 54.5%), which resulted in the third-largest drop in RevPAR (-11.6% to US$58.15).

Overall, 13 of the Top 25 Markets reported a RevPAR decline.

Oahu Island, Hawaii, registered the largest jump in RevPAR (+8.2% to US$228.16), driven by the second-largest gain in ADR (+7.5% to US$256.00).

Seattle, Washington, saw the highest rise in occupancy (+5.2% to 65.3%).

New Orleans, Louisiana, recorded the only double-digit lift in ADR (+12.4% to US$190.45), which drove the second-highest increase in RevPAR (+7.9% to US$142.54).