Global Hotel Occupancy Exceeds Pre-Pandemic Levels Over Summer With a Strong Q4 Forecasted

Amadeus’ Demand360 business intelligence data, which offers both retrospective and forward-looking insights to inform revenue strategy, reveals that global hotel occupancy has exceeded pre-pandemic levels consistently throughout the summer. For July and August 2022, hotels have seen a global occupancy average of 67% compared with an average of 64% over the same timeframe in 2019 - a 3% increase from 3 years ago.

These positive trends indicate consistent consumer confidence when it comes to booking travel for future stay dates, laying excellent foundations for a strong Q4 where on-the-books data is already outpacing 2019 bookings.

Similarly, group and business travel is on the upswing, with 35 million more group room nights booked in H1 2022 over the same time last year, and 38 million group room nights already booked for H1 2023.

Mirroring the recovery of occupancy rates is the stabilization of booking lead times. 2022 now virtually matches the booking behaviors seen in 2019 with 53% of bookings made in the 0-7 day window versus 50% of bookings made in this timeframe in 2019. As the booking lead time improves, this implies increasing traveler confidence as people make longer term commitments. Average Daily Rates (ADR) also continue to trend positively for the fall season, exceeding 2019 for the remainder of 2022 and, as usual, peaking around the Thanksgiving holiday (US) and Christmas.

Group travel is set for a strong conference season in Q4. Global group occupancy is consistently between 1-2% of pre-pandemic levels for the remainder of 2022 as the conference sector starts to rebound. Amadeus data shows that group bookings are now also starting to extend more confidently into 2023, with 4.3 million bookings already made for H1 2023.

Business travel is also seeing a steady recovery as the year continues. 2022 is closing the gap to 2019 levels according to Amadeus’ Agency360 data, which reveals that hotel bookings across all major global distribution systems (GDS) have increased 98% in August 2022 compared to January 2022. At the start of this year, hotel booking volumes fell behind 2019 performance by 62%, but this gap has progressively closed over 2022, with global hotel booking volumes in August finishing 23% behind 2019 levels.

A new Amadeus survey of travel agents supports this, as 60% of respondents say they are now logging into the GDS more than 4 times a day as business travel resumes. 7 in 10 agents agree that COVID-19 has heightened their roles as price, health, and safety remain the most important factors for travelers globally.

For more hospitality market performance and recovery insights, visit the Amadeus website here.