Hotels saw 68% revenue drop in early June compared to 2019

Williamsburg hit hardest in the state, but slight improvement in Virginia Beach and Norfolk

Published June 11, 2020 by Sydney Lake

Although the state has loosened some restrictions since entering Phase Two last Friday, Virginia hotels continued to see revenues drop in the first week in June by 68% compared to the same time a year ago, according to findings released Wednesday by Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy.

Rooms sold were also down by 50% and the average daily rate for paid hotel rooms dropped 35% to $79.71, compared to early June 2019.

“We did not see as much improvement in room revenues or in rooms sold this week as we have seen for the last four weeks,” Dragas Center Deputy Director Vinod Agarwal said in a statement. “However, we expect a continued slow rebound as the nation and the commonwealth largely reopens from COVID-19. It will take time for business and leisure travelers to fill rooms again.”

Hendersonville, Tennessee-based hospitality data company STR sends data to the Dragas Center each week for analysis.

Revenues fell 82% in Northern Virginia, 73% in Charlottesville and 56% in Hampton Roads, as compared to the first week of June 2019. Williamsburg has been hardest hit, though, with hotel revenues falling by 88%, rooms sold dropping by 77% and occupancy declining by 72%.

However, there was a bit of a silver lining, as six of the top 25 U.S. markets (according to STR) saw occupancy levels above 40%. The group includes Norfolk and Virginia Beach, which had an occupancy level of 48.4%. Other markets that saw improvement include New York City, Phoenix, Atlanta, Detroit and Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida. The lowest occupancy levels were in Oahu, Hawaii; Boston and Orlando. The first week of June 2020 ended with a 39.3% (a 2.7% bump up from the previous week) occupancy rate average, while for the year of 2019, the average occupancy rate was 66.1%.

“Not much different from previous weeks, occupancy continued to climb toward the 40% mark with noticeably higher levels on Friday and Saturday,” Jan Freitag, STR’s senior vice president of lodging insights, said in a statement. “The lower end of the market continued to lead, with economy properties finally selling more than half of their rooms again, although all hotel classes were comfortably above 20%. Drilling down to the submarket level, the highest occupancy levels were recorded in various pockets of New York City as well as popular leisure spots in Florida, Texas and South Carolina.”