Leisure and Hospitality Employment

While the overall U.S. jobs market has now surpassed pre-pandemic levels, the Leisure & Hospitality (L&H) industry still remains far behind in its recovery of lost, and desperately needed, jobs View the September 2022 Report (August data).

• At 7.2%, L&H has a higher share of jobs still lost than any industry except for mining.
• With 1.2 million jobs still lost, L&H losses far exceed those of any other industry

Share of jobs still lost/gained in each sector:

Hotel Profit Margins Hover Close To 2019 Peaks

Over the last couple of years, hotel profit-and-loss accounts have undergone quite a change in how they are analyzed. During a session at the Hotel Data Conference titled “Parsing the P&L: Analyzing Changes in Profit and Loss,” Audrey Kallman, operations analyst at STR, said revenues, costs and expenses have changed in order of importance across the pandemic months.

“Profitability peaked in 2019, but in that year all segments saw very limited [total revenue per available room],” Kallman said. “Over the past four years, labor costs have outpaced revenue growth, and as occupancy increases, you will see an additional rise in labor costs."

Kallman said the break-even percentage of occupancy decreased during the pandemic and continued falling as hoteliers further understood how to reduce expenses.

STR: U.S. hotel results for week ending 10 September

As expected with the Labor Day calendar shift, U.S. hotel performance fell slightly from the previous week and showed weakened comparisons with 2019, according to STR‘s latest data through 10 September.

• Among the Top 25 Markets, Orlando reported the only occupancy increase over 2019 (+1.5% to 59.3%).
• Miami reported the largest ADR gain over 2019 (+34.1% to US$175.85).
• San Francisco (-39.6% to US$137.61) and Washington, D.C (-39.6% to US$84.92), matched for the steepest RevPAR decline over 2019.

4-10 September 2022 (percentage change from comparable week in 2019):

• Occupancy: 61.7% (-11.2%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): US$146.80 (+10.6%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$90.50 (-1.8%)