Every local industry is affected by a natural disaster, but it's difficult to think of one that is exposed to demand spikes and valleys more than the hotel business. Sold-out hotels are completely abandoned at the last moment by fleeing travelers, or empty hotels suddenly become full with distressed passengers, aid workers and insurance claims adjusters.
The latest example of this is Hurricane Irene, which churned north along the Atlantic seaboard during the weekend of 27-28 August, wreaking havoc from North Carolina to New York. Though the damage was less than expected, millions of people were affected by the storm—as were thousands of hotels.
To track the impact of Irene on hotels in the days leading up to the storm and during that weekend, we used a map provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to approximate the completed path of the hurricane. The path used included not only the areas affected by hurricane-force conditions, but also those that were subject to tropical storm conditions. The following map shows the affected area, with the yellow dots representing hotels in Irene's path.
In all, approximately 7,000 hotels are represented in the map above, about half of which report daily data to STR. Using these reports we can geospatially visualize the immediate impact of the storm on hotel performance.
Comparing year-over-year performance yields the most accurate analysis, and we compared the same day-of-week to further minimize normal business fluctuations. The following series of maps show daily rate of change for both occupancy and rate for the affected hotels. The data has been aggregated by tract; bright red colors suggest significant declines, and bright green represent positive growth. Shades of gray suggest relatively flat performance.
Six days before landfall (August 21), the hotel performance in the affected area looked like this:
Hotel performance on this day was relatively flat or at least following trends already being realized for the month. As Irene began to form and its projected path become clearer, this began to change. The following shows the performance change on 24 August, three days before landfall:
Here we see declines in both occupancy and rate, especially in the Carolinas, where the storm was expected to first make landfall. However, massive drops along the coast were not yet occurring.
This is the map from 26 August, one day before landfall:
Clearly coastal hotels were being abandoned by this date, with significant occupancy and rate declines occurring north through Maryland. On the day of landfall (27 August), these declines become even more pronounced:
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By this day, the northeast was fully preparing for impact, and the significant public safety measures (such as New York City shutting down its public transportation system) threatened to add to hoteliers' woes. However, what's interesting is that hotel performance, while markedly down in many areas of the northeast, was actually up in many areas around New York City. Lower Manhattan, which Mayor Bloomberg seemed poised to declare a disaster zone, fell about 8% in RevPAR for the day. But the New York City Area tract was up 24%, and most of Long Island was up over 10%. Clearly, much of this can be attributed to excess media coming to the area and travelers who simply refused to change their plans. Distressed passenger also undoubtedly played a key role here, with the Newark area up over 20% in RevPAR.
On Sunday, much of the northeast was deluged by the storm, but the overall impact wasn't as massive as feared. On that day, hotel performance surged:
Hotel RevPAR in the New York City Area was up more than 40% over the same day previous year, and parts of Long Island, though much without power, were up more than 80%.
Finally, fast-forwarding five days later, we can see hotel performance had returned to normal, approximating similar conditions to what was seen six days before the storm.
Below is an animated daily map that more clearly demonstrates the changes in daily performance from 21 August through 3 September.
More coverage from HotelNewsNow.com on Hurricane Irene's effects on the East Coast hotel landscape:
- East Coast hotels see performance impact
- Price gouging after a disaster
- Irene: Hotel guests flee North Carolina coast
- Hurricane Irene: Atlantis reports ‘minimal’ impact
- East Coast hoteliers seek normalcy after Irene
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of HotelNewsNow.com or its parent company, Smith Travel Research and its affiliated companies. Columnists published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.