Hopes of pent-up demand fueling recovery in hospitality are coming to fruition for hotel giant Marriott, which doubled its sales in the second quarter.
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More vaccinations and fewer travel restrictions have led to some bright spots for the world’s largest hotel chains, which have been seeing higher occupancy rates this year. Optimistic industry watchers are declaring this improvement a sign of recovery in hospitality, and perhaps the broader travel and tourism sector. Others are receiving mixed signals.
The recent results from Marriott, the world’s biggest hospitality company, are encouraging: In the three months through June, its revenue grew to $3.15 billion from $1.5 billion in the same quarter last year. Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano is squarely in the optimists’ camp. “The rate of global lodging recovery accelerated during the second quarter and momentum has continued into July,” he said. Marriott’s global occupancy grew to 51% in the second quarter.
There are some variations with regard to who is traveling, why they’re traveling, and where. Marriott is checking in more small and midsized groups, while bookings from large events continue to lag. The company also said business bookings are up. Other measures of business travel indicate that it has been slower to recover, The New York Times reports. A recent survey from the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants found that just 9% of companies have returned to pre-pandemic levels of travel.
The divide between business and leisure travel is not always clear, however. Marriott said travelers are combining their business and leisure travel. “This blending of trip purposes continues to be a real and measurable phenomenon and we think it’s good for our business,” Capuano said. “We think it will continue well beyond the end of the pandemic.”
Of course, with the Delta variant of the coronavirus posing a growing threat, many hotel firms and others in travel and tourism worldwide are proceeding with caution. In the United States domestic leisure travel has shown signs of recovery, but the future of this upward trend is unknown. In June the Biden administration suspended entry to the U.S. for non-citizens from 33 countries where the Delta variant is known to have taken hold, such as India and South Africa.
“While we are keeping a close eye on the Delta and other variant strains, we are optimistic that the upward trajectory of the global recovery will continue,” Capuano said. “Timelines are hard to predict and will continue to vary by region, but I believe that we are on our way to a full global recovery.”
