And speaking of success, what a wonderful week it was for many. I have included the bar charts tracking hotel room demand (rooms booked), occupancy, and average daily rate for the week ending on New Year’s Day.  Strengthened undoubtedly by the success and interest generated in the Capital One Orange Bowl (and our friends from both Georgia and Michigan), hotel data for the full week stayed incredibly strong with hotel room demand and guest volume right on par with similar numbers from our high water mark for the same week in 2019.  This while average daily rate surged 35% over the rates commanded in 2019.  Occupancy for the week once again exceeded 80%, and this with many more hotel rooms on line to fill compared to 2019. 

Our sales teams, collaborating with our Hotel Association partners will be monitoring this very closely and I pledge to keep you posted in the weeks ahead.  Our teams are currently conducting outreach to the dozens of meetings that are planned both in January and in the coming months to begin to get a feel for the appetite of event planners, delegates, exhibitors and sponsors to convene face-to-face.  More on this to follow, but we do have to remain cautious.  This will especially be impactful when thinking of international delegates attending, and as an example, the incredibly challenged health care and medical communities and their members.

On the leisure front, one key barometer we use is a nationwide “travel sentiment” survey that is conducted by the reputed research firm Destination Analysts.  This survey has been fielded every week since March 15, 2020, surveying American travelers through online panels regarding their thoughts, feelings, perceptions and behavior surrounding travel – specifically in the wake of the pandemic.

A trend to watch is related to the surveys fielded the past two weeks of December.  When asked on December 13th, 30% of American travelers said they planned to travel over the “Christmas Holiday.”  When asked the week of December 27th, only 21% of American travelers said in fact that they actually did travel over the holiday – a decline of 9 percentage points.

Similarly, during the weekly survey of December 13th, 21% of American travelers said they were planning to travel in January of 2022. Two weeks later as part of the December 27th survey, this percentage of American travelers planning to travel in January had dropped to 15%.  A drop of 6 percentage points or roughly 28% of the group.  Do note that this is a nationwide survey, not a specific survey about intent to travel to Greater Miami and Miami Beach.

Speaking of interest in travel to Miami specifically, a key barometer we constantly monitor is KAYAK – one of the world’s leading travel search sites.  A review of weekly “searches for flights to Miami” (a very solid core indicator) shows that when comparing similar activity in 2019, searches for Miami flights declined 6% compared to 2019 for the week ending November 28th.  That grew to a decline of 12% for the week ending December 5th, then improved to a comparable 2021 to 2019 decline of only 1% for both the week ending December 12th and the week ending December 19th.  The comparable decline grew again for the week ending December 26th (a decline of 15%), and last week the comparable searches dropped 28% when comparing 2019 to 2021.

The current volatility and uneasiness in sentiment simply underscores the incredibly delicate position destinations can find themselves when confronting things such as health uncertainty (and we’ve been there before and more importantly rebounded before.  This is also a vivid time to emphasize how vital a travel destination’s reputation and appeal need to be both in good times and in helping plow through the uncertain times and a quicker path to recovery. Our brand needs to remain vibrant and inviting 24-7 and 12 months a year.

So again, we need to continue to monitor this very closely in the weeks ahead and as promised, we will continue to update you.