COVID-19 Hotel Forecast: Los Angeles

Summary

While many are looking backwards to compare the current market environment with the post-9/11 or 2008 Great Recession periods, Phocuswright prefers to look forward – trying to address the tough questions weighing on our collective minds.

Over the coming months, by teaming up with the data science team at LodgIQ, Phocuswright will evaluate a broad swath of hotel-related and other data across a variety of key metropolitan areas. Our key objectives are to model the:

• Level of disruption
• Duration of disruption
• Shape of the recovery curve

The goal is to understand the similarities and differences in hotel market dynamics between destinations. This is especially relevant, as some markets may have yet to peak in terms of the level of infections, while others are seeing active coronavirus case counts decline.

Similar to our Boston/New York comparison, we've compared cities on the U.S. West Coast in this edition: Los Angeles/San Francisco.

As a result of measures taken in the city, Los Angeles' rate of RevPAR decline across the weekly forecasts covering the six weeks between March 29 and May 3 has not been nearly as steep as other U.S. gateway cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco. Differences in YoY RevPAR variance for March and April showed that the impact on Los Angeles was less severe than for most major markets. Some potential good news for Los Angeles is that modeling for the second quarter shows continual improvement in June and July from the May bottom.