Duetto’s latest Pulse Report showed positive signals across the board for hotels in North America, with bookings, pace, and web traffic all showing some growth. A spike in short-term bookings for September, October, and November led to net new bookings into the North American market increasing by 121 percent, according to the latest edition of the Pulse Report, which tracks data from August 10-23 as compared to data for July 27 to August 9.
Markets showing promise included Florida (beach markets), Colorado, California (except for major metro markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles), and Tennessee (excluding Nashville). The cities of Chicago, Nashville, and Los Angeles continued to struggle, with cancellations outpacing bookings.
On the books data (pace) by stay month also saw dramatic gains for September 2020, with an 18-percent increase in pace. However, overall bookings for the month are currently trailing by 75 percent behind the same time last year.
Web shopping also continued to see gains, with an average increase of 377 percent for the next 16 months. Hawaii showed outstanding promise, with an average increase of 1,500 percent on web traffic. However, actual net bookings into Hawaii are down (cancellations continue to outpace bookings) but intent to travel is clear.
The best performing look-to-book markets were Florida, Colorado, and Hawaii. The worst performing markets include Georgia and Nevada.
Little Growth for Latin America
Hotel performance in Latin America did not mirror that of its Northern neighbors. Net new bookings into Latin America show a large uptick in September 2020, but very little growth for the rest of the year, suggesting extremely short-term demand is leading this market.
Pace for Latin America also shows little sign of growth. All months are showing flat except September, where the data shows a small bump in growth based on the uptick in net new bookings.
Look-to-book web traffic into Latin America is also not as impressive as North America. Still, it averages about 89 percent (increase versus prior Pulse Report) which is a strong growth indicator.
Instead, web shopping traffic is more pronounced in the first quarter of 2021. In those months, web shopping increases are above 100 percent at the time of this report versus Duetto’s prior report.