SAN JOSE — The battered hotel sector in the Bay Area remains years away from a full post-coronavirus recovery — but a significant rebound is expected to begin during 2021, lodging experts said Tuesday.
Hotels in Santa Clara County are expected to recover before their counterparts in the East Bay, while hotels in the San Francisco-San Mateo region face the longest recovery period of the three major lodging regions in the Bay Area, according to a report released by hotel analysts with CBRE, a commercial real estate firm.
Ongoing rollouts of vaccines to combat the coronavirus, along with federal stimulus packages, have bolstered the prospects for the hotel sector, stated a report from CBRE Hotels Research.
“We expect hotels and drive-to destination resort areas catering to leisure travelers to continue to see the fastest gains in occupancy,” said Julie Purnell, executive vice president, CBRE Hotels Advisory.
Revenue per available room, or RevPAR, which is the most closely watched barometer of the health of the hotel industry, is expected to improve in Santa Clara County, the East Bay, and the San Francisco-San Mateo region during 2021 compared with 2020, the CBRE reported stated.
Silicon Valley’s hotel market is expected to fully recover from its coronavirus ailments by sometime in 2023, measured by the region’s surpassing the pre-COVID revenue per available room and occupancy level of early 2020, CBRE Hotel Research analysts predicted.
East Bay hotels should fully recover their occupancy and RevPAR levels by 2024, stated the CBRE experts. However, it will take until at least 2025 for the San Francisco-San Mateo hotel market to recover, according to CBRE.
The region’s hotel sector, nevertheless, appears to have turned the corner.
“Based on our forecasts, the worst of the declines are now behind us,” said Rachael Rothman, head of Hotels Research & Data Analytics for CBRE.
Here are the CBRE Hotel Research predictions for revenue per available room during 2021 for each of the three major hotel markets in the Bay Area:
— Santa Clara County. RevPAR in 2021 should be $65.86, up 29.6% from 2020.
— East Bay. RevPAR should be $60.08 this year, a gain of 13% from last year.
— San Francisco-San Mateo revenue per available room is predicted to be $61.14, up 3.2% from last year.
“We are beginning to see green shoots of a recovery in air travel data, booking patterns, and revenue per available room,” Rothman said.
