It's been a tale of two pandemics for hotel demand across Central and South America for corporate-demand driven markets compared to more leisure-driven markets.

Speaking during the "Central and South America Hotel Performance Overview" session of the online Hotel Data Conference: Global Edition, Patricia Boo, area director for Central and South America at STR, said all of the major corporate markets in the region have suffered disproportionately compared to leisure markets, with the notable exception of Lima, Peru.

That market in particular was able to maintain some demand levels due to high numbers of mining workers staying in hotels, but having even that lower-grade demand meant drastic drops in rates, which dropped over 50% from before the pandemic.

"It's very discounted rates for these hotels that were occupied through mining workers mostly," she said.

Other corporate-driven markets like Bogotá, Colombia; Santiago, Chile; San José, Costa Rica; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Quito, Ecuador; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Panama City, Panama, all saw continued poor performance, with occupancy consistently below 30%, until some weekend demand began to pick up in just the past few months.

"In 2021, the daily data began picking up some weekend demand spikes as we see more international groups opening up and a few regional events happening, driving some domestic leisure demand," Boo said.

Indeed both leisure and corporate markets have suffered greatly during the pandemic, although leisure demand saw a disproportionate uptick in demand in the final portion of 2020.

By and large, domestic demand has favored regional leisure destinations over capital cities and other urban markets, she said. Those that have been able to court some levels of international travel have done particularly well compared to their counterparts.

"From October, when the lockdown was lifted in Colombia, we see a shift for Cartagena and Santa Marta for the first week of the year in 2021 with over 70% occupancy," Boo said.

She said since the start of 2021, beach destinations have had consistent weekend demand spikes.

Aran Ryan, director of lodging analytics at Tourism Economics, said there are signs that Central and South America are poised for a rebound in 2021, albeit with some continued economic damage from the COVID-19 crisis.

“We’re recovering robustly, but the global economy is somewhat off the track of where it was before the global coronavirus recession,” he said, speaking during the “Central and South America Macroeconomic Overview” session.

He said the rebound won’t be experienced equally across the region, with Argentina being one country that will face the steepest climb back in terms of gross domestic product. He noted the country had issues prior to the pandemic and is “expected to trail as we come out of the recession.”

Ryan said Brazil had a smaller economic impact than some other countries in the region because leaders were reluctant to shut things down, but the country is likely to lag the rebound of other countries “without the public health crisis under control” and high debt levels compared to other countries.

“Although it’s doing reasonably well, it’s going to lag a bit as we come out of this recession,” he said.

One of the most pessimistic indicators for the region is how most of its countries are well behind the rest of the globe in terms of vaccinations, with the clear exception of Chile.

“Chile is world-leading in the share of its population that has already received at least one dose at 29%, but most other countries are closer to 5% of their people,” he said. “We expect this to pick up in the second quarter.”

Patricia Zulato, country manager for Brazil at STR, said there is good news as the country’s hotel industry ramps up again, with 97% of hotels now open, but hoteliers are still coping with a second collapse in demand as a new wave of restrictions were introduced at the start of 2021.

“Due to the new virus variant increases and the health system collapsing in the country, occupancy has started to register a new drop,” she said.

She said there was a strong connection earlier in the pandemic between the numbers of new cases and RevPAR performance in the country, although that correlation weakened amid the summer travel season. So far, there hasn’t been a strong connection between a growth in occupancy and a vaccination.

“But this is just the beginning of vaccination in Brazil, as the country has just vaccinated around 6% of the population,” she said.

Cities reliant on corporate demand remain the hardest hit, Zulato said, with Brasilia, São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte all below 30% occupancy for all of 2020 and both January and February 2021.