Never, since COVID-19, was hotel performance this high.
WILLEMSTAD - CHATA issues the Hotel Performance for the month of July with occupancies never seen before since COVID-19 hit our island and the world. The month of July even showed slightly higher occupancy versus July 2019 (+6.1%). And the other parameters being the Average Daily Rate and Revenue Per Available Room show positive figures compared to July 2019. All in all, finally a strong recovery after the bad first six months of this year.
The holiday season plays a role, the high vaccination rate on the island, and the situation around Covid on the island, all are important criteria for tourists to decide to travel to our beautiful island. For August the bookings look good but not as strong as July, and CHATA is therefore still cautiously positive for the last half year of 2021. Important is to keep the situation of infections under control as Curacao needs to stay on ‘code yellow’ for the Netherlands and to make sure that CDC puts Curacao back on a lower risk level again, although US travelers didn’t seem to mind that much in the past.
If we compare the hotel performance with the Caribbean islands, we see a Caribbean occupancy of 53.6% (18,1% lower than Curacao) which is compared to 2020 (+19.5%) this is a significant increase however compared to 2019 pre-COVID this is a decrease of more than 17%.
Below we present an overview for Curaçao of the three main hotel performance indicators for July compared to 2020 and to 2019.
|
July |
2021 |
2020 |
2021 vs. 2020 |
2019 |
2021 vs. 2019 |
|
Occ. |
71.7% |
33.2% |
+116.3% |
67.6% |
+6.1% |
|
ADR |
$159.28 |
$143.81 |
+10.8% |
$145.95 |
+9.1% |
|
RevPAR |
$114.19 |
$47.68 |
+139.5% |
$98.62 |
+15.8% |
*Smith Travel Research (STR) is the leading global provider of competitive benchmarking, information services and research to the hotel industry.
In July of 2021 Curaçao had a hotel occupancy of 71.7%. Compared to 2020 (33.2%) this is a significant increase of 116.3%. More so, if we look at the occupancy data pre-COVID (July 2019), this is also an increase of 6.1%. The average daily rate also increased with 10.8% compared to 2020, to $159.28. Compared to July of 2019, this is also an increase of 9.1%. As for the revenue per available room, numbers indicate a significant increase of 139.5% compared to 2020. From $47.68 in 2020 to $114.19 in 2021. Even compared to the pre-COVID data, the revenue per available room increased with 15.8%.
Sustainable recovery will take time
Most impressive in the July performance figures is that the recovery after the 2nd lockdown in March/April was much stronger and faster than the recovery back in 2020, which took several months to get back to some decent but not impressive numbers. Curacao has shown that recovery is possible, and we need to work hard to maintain these strong recovery figures. This all depends on the COVID infections on the island, keeping Curacao in the low-risk countries list with our key markets and reach the highest vaccination coverage as possible. For Curacao to recover from COVID, just like many other countries in the world, will take time.
Nevertheless, the Curaçao tourism sector has shown its ability to recover fast.
A prolongation of the financial support (TVL and NOW) for the last half year of 2021 is urgently required to support this recovery. The huge losses suffered in 2020 and the first six months of 2021 are just not to recover from like that, even though tourists fortunately decided to come back to visit our island in big numbers again. CHATA believes that all tourism & hospitality partners need to work together and with the support of the government in terms of the last phase of the financial aid program, we can get our economy back on its feet again.
