Hotel Sales From Business Travel Projected To Remain 23% Below 2019 Levels

According to a new forecast from the Hotel & Lodging Association and Kalibri Labs, hotel revenue from business travel is still struggling to recover from the losses of the pandemic.  

The prediction expects that business travel this year will stay 23% below 2019 levels, equating to around a $20.7 billion loss.  

In 2019, hotel revenue from business travel clocked in at $90 billion, but is projected to reach just $69 billion this year, a slight improvement of the last two years.  

Despite this development, the forecast does not expect business travel to fully rebound until 2024 at the earliest, which may be even longer for large cities. 

For instance, New York City’s business travel revenue is predicted to reach $2 billion this year, which is less than half of the $4.5 billion seen in 2019. In Chicago, revenue is projected to fall 48.7% from its 2019 levels, while San Francisco may see a 68.8% drop from three years ago. 

While this is a grim look at the hotel industry, data from CoStar shows that hotel sales reached a first-quarter six-year high of $12.5 billion in 2022.