72 – Positive Signs of Hotel Industry Recovery

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

In this episode of the Suite Spot, we share all the exciting, positive signs of recovery in the hotel industry. Brand Ambassador and Host of the Suite Spot Ryan Embree shares factors inside and outside of the hotel industry that all point towards positive signs for travel moving forward. Ryan examines some travel industry data including occupancy levels, hotel rooms sold, and TSA numbers: all of which have been trending positively for hoteliers. He looks at outside factors that bode well for the hotel industry like vaccine distribution, slowly-lifting COVID restrictions, and overall traveler sentiment. He also looks at some positive internal data collected by Travel Media Group, such as review response numbers and hotelier sentiment. This is a feel-good episode that should get hotels excited about the industry’s future as we move into the busy spring and summer months. If you are looking for digital marketing recommendations for your hotel this upcoming spring and summer season, call or text us at 407-984-7455. Suite Spot Podcast · 72 - Positive Signs of Hotel Industry Recovery Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check-in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, this is Ryan Embree, Brand Ambassador at Travel Media Group and host of the Suite Spot. Got a very exciting episode for you today - been looking forward to this episode - what feels like for a very, very long time. As we've done episodes of the Suite Spot, we've always been trying to look for the positives during and following this COVID-19 pandemic, because it has had such an impact on the hospitality, and hotel industry specifically. So what I thought we do today is - we are starting to see now more than just a glimmer of hope - we're starting to see multiple positive signs of recovery within the hotel industry, which I'm super excited about, I'm sure you, the hotel listener, is very excited about today. This episode is going to be circled all around, identifying those positive signs and potentially looking at some factors that might give us kind of a trail map or blueprint of where this recovery is headed and some ways to maybe gain some competitive advantages. But really at the heart of this episode, is just going to be talking about these signs of recovery and really should, hopefully, launch us into the spring and summer of really, really great numbers and just somewhat back to normal, you know, for some hotels, it's been a year since we've seen some of these. Ryan Embree: So we're going to start with some outside, industry factors. And the first thing that we look at, when we look at signs of hotel recovery, are the numbers. Now STR does an incredible job - if you haven't checked it out already, please do str.com - they provide some incredible analytics for the hotel and hospitality industry, and they're constantly putting out new information and data. So the most recent data that we saw, was more than 21 million rooms sold. I remember when we had an episode last April in 2020, that mark was only a million. To see that exceed 21 million rooms is a huge, huge indicator that we're gaining momentum, which is what we like to see, including some top 25 markets, including Tampa, which had an occupancy most recently at 81.8% and Phoenix at 77.1%. So those are top 25 markets all at 75% occupied or higher. Tampa obviously benefiting from spring break, but we expect those numbers, with the warmer temperatures, right around the corner to start to increase. Now, looking back at historical data, we are only 83% of occupancy regained from that 2019 benchmark.