Quantifying the economic impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. hotel industry: Examination of hotel segments and operational structures

The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial negative impacts on the global economy. While all sectors of the economy are expected to be adversely affected, the economic implications of this pandemic for the hotel industry have not yet been widely investigated. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the U.S. hotel industry. The results showed that daily room OCC, ADR and RevPAR have plunged about 74%, 47% and 86%, respectively. Although the impact is observed across all hotel segments, economy-scale hotels were more resilient, whereas luxury-scale hotels experienced the largest decline. Also, chain-managed hotels are the most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as compared to franchise and independent hotels. Quantifying the magnitude of this impact, we found that the U.S. hotel industry's revenue losses accumulated to over $30 billion between March-2020 and May-2020. Implications for practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers are discussed.