What's Happening In Travel

On today’s show we’re taking a look at what’s happening in the travel sector. Many real estate investors, even large commercial real estate investors own portfolios of rental properties and portfolios of short term rental properties. This can mean short term rentals in the core of business district, or it can mean a ski chalet in the mountains or a cottage on the lake. All three of these are going to be affected by the dynamics of global travel.

Travel is starting to rebound on a global basis. It is a nuisance to spend a few hundred dollars on covid tests in order to board an aircraft. Airfares were low in the summer in an effort to bring people back into air travel. But rising fuel prices and the financial pain of the past 18 months means that airlines have to charge more in order to survive.

Hotels have struggled with incredibly low occupancy throughout the pandemic. But here too the numbers are improving.

Several of the largest hotel brands Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt reported their numbers for Q3. Occupancy rose 23.4 percentage points from 34.8% in Q3 of 2020 to 58.2% in the third quarter of this year. While occupancy may be up, nightly rates are still low as hotels try to compete for too few travelers. The folks at Hyatt reported their financials yesterday. Their revenue per available room is down 31.8% compared with 2019, which is slightly better than the industry average which is still down 35.5% compared with 2019.

-----------------

Host: Victor Menasce

email: podcast@victorjm.com