By Rico Louw
CJ Contributor
Caribbean hotels reported mixed results across the industry’s three key performance indicators in July.
When comparing July 2018 with July 2017, occupancy fell 3.8%, which was the largest decline observed in the metric thus far this year. On the other hand, average daily rate (ADR) grew 3.4% for the same period, limiting a decrease in revenue per available room (RevPAR) to -0.5%. What was encouraging was the fact that each of the three key performance metrics reached their highest absolute values since April.
Several destinations stood out, however: Turks and Caicos and Curaçao.
The Baoase luxury resort in Curacao.
On the islands where STR maintains a sufficient reporting sample, Curacao experienced the only double-digit rise in July occupancy (+13.2%) and the second-largest increase in RevPAR (+23.3%). The Turks and Caicos Islands registered the largest increases in ADR (+22.4%) and RevPAR (+25.2%).
Puerto Rico and Aruba each posted the second-largest increase in ADR (+14.3%), however,
Puerto Rico experienced the largest decline in occupancy (-11.3%) due to a 27.9% drop in demand.
It’s important to keep in mind that July 2017 data was right before the severe hurricane season of last year. At that time, the region was experiencing positive performance.
For questions regarding hotel data reporting in the Caribbean, please contact Rico Louw, Client Account Manager at STR, at rlouw@str.com.
— CJ