Sentiment Survey: Australian Hotel Industry and the Impact of Covid-19 - By Damien Little

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This sentiment survey was conducted by Horwath HTL Singapore, in partnership with AHS Advisory, to gauge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hotels across Australia. 

Key findings of the report include:

  • The majority of hotels in the survey (67%) are planning to remain open. This is a higher ratio than had initially been expected heading into the survey. A greater proportion of Hotels located in Regional markets (69%) are planning to stay open compared to their State Capital counterparts (65%) despite the fact that a greater proportion of participating Regional hotels have already closed.

  • The majority of survey participants expect the impact of COVID-19 to be long-term, thus, occupancy performance is expected to start rebounding only in Q4 2020. There is no noticeable difference in the trend of occupancy expectations among properties, regardless of location, although hotels in Melbourne expect Q3 2020 to record lower performance than Q2 2020. This could be due to the looming amount of new supply to enter the market.

  • Unsurprisingly, domestic-sourced demand segments are expected to recover faster, since there is more uncertainty surrounding the return of international travel. This strongly aligns with Australia being a predominant domestic hotel market.

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