Hotel occupancy up
According to data analysts STR, Orlando hotels hit 50% occupancy for the week ending Feb. 20, beating the national average of 48%.
As the weather warms up, tourists from the snowy parts of the country are refilling Orlando hotel rooms. But for an industry decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic, analysts say the full recovery is still years away.
“It was always our prediction that as things thawed out in winter, individual leisure travel would return,” said Jan Freitag, senior VP for data analysts STR.
Freitag’s company, which monitors hotel activity, showed Orlando hotels hit 50% occupancy for the week ending Feb. 20, beating the national average of 48%. While that represents a 43% drop from the same time last year before the pandemic, it’s a jump from where rates were for most of 2020.
Orlando hotels saw an average of 42% occupancy in 2020, a number that includes the months before COVID-19 brought travel to a near-standstill. Ten months saw rates below that, with five months below 30%. Occupancy rates in 2019 averaged 76%.
The larger missing piece of the puzzle is group travel, such as conferences, which Freitag notes are tied to the vaccines. “You tell me when we have 70% of Americans have two shots in the arm, and I will tell you when group meetings return,” he said.
As of February, the Orange County Convention Center had 126 canceled and rescheduled events and estimated the economic losses at nearly $3 billion.
Freitag said this kind of “incentive travel” is key to bringing up another significant statistic: average daily room rates. In Orlando, the average in 2020 was $86.46, a 35% drop from the previous year.
“We’re seeing [daily room rates] down across the country, which is clearly an indicator that there are no groups,” he said.
STR predicted last year that leisure travel would begin its return to pre-pandemic levels later this year, hitting full recovery by 2023. But Freitag said the daily room rates likely won’t be back to 2019 levels until 2025.
“It’s not just when will people feel comfortable themselves, but when will CEOs and CFOs feel comfortable putting people back onto planes and into a ballroom,” Freitag said.
Signs of recovery are encouraging for an area so devastated by the pandemic. More than 10,000 regional hotel employees were laid off or furloughed in the past year.
But in Freitag’s eyes, it’s still a waiting game. “The question about the speed with which people come back, there is a one-toone relationship with vaccinations,” he said.