Through its Hotel News Now site, STR publishes weekly results for hotel performance in North America, and for the week of 26 May-2019 to 1-Jun-2019, Canada's hotels posted 0.1% drop in occupancy rates to 72.2%. However, average daily rates increased 1.5% to CAD170.87 and revenue per available room (RevPAR) grew 0.5% year-on-year to CAD123.45.
Breaking down hotel performance by location, STR calculated Newfoundland and Labrador posted the highest rise in occupancy of 8.7% to 62%, but also the steepest decline in average daily rates, 8.2% to CAD131.97.
Ontario took the top spot for largest increase in average daily rate, posting a 5.6% increase to CAD173.45 while Saskatchewan posted the largest decline in RevPAR of 9.9% to CAD69.56, which STR stated was drive by the province posting the largest drop in occupancy of 8.7% to 57.6%.
Alberta posted the second largest drop in average daily rates of 4.5% to CAD145.52 and RevPAR, which fell 6% to CAD88.53.
Elsewhere in North America, across the border in the US, the global hotel performance tracker STR lowered its unit revenue hotel forecast for 2019 from 2.3% to 2%.
STR partnered with Tourism Economics to calculate hotel performance for this year, and the companies concluded that revenue per available room RevPAR for the US hotel industry grow by 2.9% in both 2018 and 2019, which was the lowest growth percentage change for the country since 2009. The revised 2% forecast for 2019 is markedly lower than 2018 and previous 2019 forecasts.
"The first quarter of the year came in worse than forecast on the ADR [average daily rate] side, and while the indicators point to better performance the remainder of this year, we lowered our RevPAR projection 30 basis points mostly as a result of Q1 performance," explains Amanda Hite, STR's president and CEO.
"The good news is that we continue to set monthly demand records, and occupancy has been a bit better than expected. Economic momentum is slowing, but consumer confidence and a low unemployment rate should aid more meaningful performance growth as we get into the busy summer months. Forward-looking US air travel bookings remain steady and vacation intentions are on the upswing compared to the two previous years," she adds.
A majority of the US' top 25 markets should register RevPAR growth of 1% to 3% for 2019, according to STR, with Atlanta, San Francisco and Tampa/St Petersburg posting growth between 3% and 7%. The five markets that are projected to post a RevPAR decline of 1% to 2% in 2019 are Houston, Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Washington, DC.