ILHA NorthEast Webinar Series: Market Recovery Trends

21/09/2020 12:01

PALM BEACH, Fla., Sept. 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Chris King, Chief Development Officer, Salamander Hotels & Resorts and board member of the International Luxury Hotel Association's NorthEast Chapter, put together an expert panel on Market Recovery Trends, with Mark Woodworth, Principal, R.M. Woodworth & Associates moderating , and panelists Jan Freitag, Senior Vice President, STR, Cindy Estis Green, Co-Founder & CEO, Kalibri Labs, and Jamie Lane, Senior Director, Economic & Forecasting, CBRE.

The panelists agreed that until there was a vaccine, the challenges of the pandemic would continue into winter and possibly for years to come.

"Any employment gains have not been felt in the hotel industry, which will experience a slow recovery in contrast to consumer spending, as seen in car, house and liquor sales," said Jamie Lane. "Purchases are not flowing into the services industry. The lodging industry is in various shades of bad and won't get into positive territory for a couple of years."

"The only silver lining," said Jan Freitag, "was that China went from single digit figures in February to over 60% occupancy now without a vaccine. It is helpful to see that the hotel industry can make it through without a vaccine. Initially the United States was 8 weeks behind China, but the relationship has unfortunately broken as China was able to get its data back to normal while the US has not been able to do so."

"Group business, which counts as one third of the market piece, is missing, causing a lot of pain. Until that demand returns, it is hard to replace it with something else," said Cindy Estis Green. She advised not to cut rates as it will not stimulate business and can take a decade to recover. "It's going to be a long haul for the luxury segment," she added, "with business only coming back in 6,12 or 18 months."

"On a positive note, don't feel you are powerless," said Cindy, "don't just take anything that comes along, put money and time into direct campaigns and business rather than third party programs or OTA's. The interest in contactless travel there has created a bias for direct booking, which contributes more than 2X to profit and cash flow.

Know the rate category and channel volume in your market – now and predicted – to plan optimally. Establish performance around net ADR/net RevPAR so acquisition costs are monitored and managed. Lastly, benchmark and monitor by rate category and channel so you can determine if your efforts are paying off.

Out of all of this we will become much more efficient with a positive impact on overall operations as it will force us to scrutinize everything we are doing."

Watch the webinar here with a detailed market report.

The webinar was sponsored by TFS Natural Home by The Futon Shop, market leaders since 1976 in the design and manufacturing of natural and non-toxic furniture and mattresses for hospitality, retail, and direct to consumers. Their Copper Infused technology is woven into threads that will never wash out and stops and kills the growth of bacteria and other infectious pathogens.

About the International Luxury Hotel Association

The International Luxury Hotel Association is luxury hospitality's preeminent association promoting, unifying and advancing the industry through insight, opinion, and research. ILHA reaches an audience of more than 500,000 hotel professionals in 90+ countries and produces LUXURY HOTELIERS Magazine, ILHA SmartBrief and the INSPIRE SUMMITS in Europe and North America. They also run LinkedIn's largest hospitality and travel group, which ranks in the top 100 of the more than 10 million professional groups on LinkedIn. Connect with us on theilha.com, hospitality and travel forum, ILHA Facebook, ILHA Instagram, ILHA Twitter, ILHA YouTube

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