NYC Hotels Facing Unhappy Holidays

This time of year is normally a happy one for New York City hoteliers, with international travelers flocking to experience the winter holidays in the Big Apple.

But this is not a normal year, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that signs point to a holiday season that’s more muted than merry for the city’s hospitality industry.

As The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday (Nov. 24), the hotel division at real estate firm CBRE expects city-wide occupancy to reach 56% in the fourth quarter, which is just a small improvement from the previous quarter.

“We’re going to get some visitation over the holidays, but I don’t think this is a cure-all in any way,” said Rachael Rothman, head of hotels research and data analytics at CBRE.

Read more: With US Travel Ban Lifted, Cities, Hotels, Homeshares Compete for Int’l Tourists

Hotels expect more robust bookings from domestic travelers coming to do holiday shopping and check out the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, but international travel will likely be subdued, as foreign tourism isn’t expected to pick up until spring of 2022.

This time of year is an important one for hotels in the city, as they can traditionally count on it to drive fourth-quarter revenue. In 2019, New York City hotels charged some of their highest rates of the year in the first two months of December, second only to the end of September, when world leaders were in town for the UN Generally Assembly meeting.

Tourism in New York fell 67% last year, costing the city around $1.2 billion in tax revenue, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli told the Journal. NYC & Company, the city’s tourism office, projects that tourism won’t return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024.

Also see: Merchants Bank on Healthy Consumer to Set 2021 Holiday Sales Records

That’s not to say every industry is expecting a blue Christmas. As PYMNTS reported on Wednesday (Nov. 24), retailers are expecting a rush of consumers who are planning to spend heavily in the next few weeks due to ample savings and pent-up demand fostered during the pandemic.

PYMNTS’ research, conducted with Kount, showed that nearly 20% of consumers said they’ll spend more this year than last year, while 55% expect to spend the same. For digital-only shoppers, these figures are even higher: One-third say they’ll spend more this year, with 45% planning to keep their spending the same as 2020.