COVID-19 Hotel Forecast: Boston

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.

Boston started March in better shape than New York across the board, but its downward slope accelerated much more aggressively. Despite the city's successful curve-flattening, the leisure travel ban has contributed to Boston's YoY occupancy falling off. Some potential good news for Boston is that modeling for 2Q20 shows continual improvement in May and June from the April bottom.