It’s a tale of two metrics when it comes to the latest edition of the Pulse Report, which assesses key hotel metrics from July 27 to August 9.
NB: This is an article from Duetto
On the one hand, web traffic continues to tease interest across all regions – there’s plenty of looking. But on the other hand, pick-up remains very nervous – with bookings being in the week for the week in many instances.
Add in the new restrictions coming back into play in parts of EMEA and APAC, and we are seeing a slump in recovery for those regions.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom. China has returned to almost full operating capacity and is seeing average occupancy of 60%. Hopefully, this is something all markets can aim for in the weeks and months ahead.
Web Traffic
The volume of web traffic by stay month (bookings, regrets, and denials on brand.com) for the North America market saw improvement in website visits for August through November as compared to the previous Pulse Report (which tracked July 13-26). However, the rate of growth for August and September slowed. In the last report we saw a doubling of web visits for both months as compared to the prior weeks, while the most recent data shows a growth of only 50% for August and 38% for September.
Web traffic for LATAM showed a significant increase in visits for the short-term window. Visits for stays in the month of August showed an increase compared to the previous weeks of 48%. Both September and October also showed healthy increases in web traffic, up 90% and 69% respectively.
The latest edition of the Pulse Report saw positive increases in web traffic through the end of the year for EMEA, the bulk of which were still for the short term with a 49% increase in volume for stay dates in August and 36% for stay dates in September.
APAC saw a further increase in interest with October showing a 56% increase compared to the last Pulse Report. However, this is not translating into bookings which are definitely continuing to be focused in the very short term.
Booking Patterns
In North America the latest data on net pick up by stay month showed a slight improvement in activity. New bookings for stays in August, September, and October grew from the prior two week period by 47%, 35%, and 39% respectively.
Looking ahead to the first half of 2021, we saw a noticeable uptick for stays in April 2021 for North America. While this is a potentially promising development, it’s important to note the month of April 2021 as a whole remained 44% behind YoY pace.
LATAM continued to face difficulty with new bookings. The most recent two weeks of data showed a further slowdown in new booking activity for the region, with August being the only exception with a slight increase of 16% in net new bookings.
All other months through January 2021 showed a further slowdown to varying degrees for LATAM’s hotels. November 2020 showed the least amount of drop with only a 1% dip compared to the prior weeks of data, while September and October showed the most significant slowdown at -47% and -49% respectively.
Following the development of widespread re-instated quarantine requirements or travel warnings across Europe, we have seen a sharp change in sentiment with travelers across the EMEA region.
August reported only a 4% increase in net pick up volume whereas the previous edition of the Pulse Report showed a 52% increase going into the month. Bookings for September and October also dropped significantly by 67% and 174% respectively.
This decline was driven largely by the restrictions imposed on the Iberia region, which saw very negative pick up through the end of the year including a -66% in volume for August stay dates. However, looking at the rest of Southern Europe, August stay dates saw growth of 22% suggesting that the demand likely shifted within the region, to countries such as Italy, Greece and Croatia. Months beyond August, however, were similarly negative in net pick up volume with a -24% drop for September and -118% drop for October overall.
In APAC, we continued to see very short-term booking lead times of 3-4 weeks. For August net pick up increased 84% compared to data from the last Pulse Report and September saw a 70% increase in pick up volume. September was largely driven by small but significant increases for China and South East Asia while the pick up for Oceania was focused within the immediately upcoming two weeks. This is to be expected following continued or further lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand.
