By the Caribbean Journal staff

It was a sluggish second quarter for Mexico’s hotel industry, according to a new report from analytics firm STR.

The country’s hotel occupancy was down 3.1 percent year over year to 61.8 percent last month, while daily rates fell by 3.1 percent and revenue per available room shrunk by 6.1 percent.

The absolute occupancy level in Mexico in the second quarter was the lowest for any second quarter in Mexico since as far back as 2013, according to STR.

The decline came in part because of the country’s strong hotel development pipeline, as Mexico’s hotel supply grew by 3 percent in the period.

STR also broached seaweed problems in Cancun and the Riviera Maya as potential impact factors for the decline.

Indeed, the country’s tourism hub, the Yucatan peninsula, saw the steepest declines in each of the three key performance metrics: a 5.4 percent decline in occupancy; a 7.3 percent drop in average daily rates and a 12.3 percent decline in revenue per available room.

— CJ