Business trips, conventions, occupation of offices stuck in collapse: it’s been so long since people have forgotten what the old normal is



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Hotel business travel revenues are expected to decline by 80% in the top 20 destinations in 2021.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Even though American leisure travelers are out in force, for American hotels, very large and lucrative business travel revenues – business, group, government and other commercial travel – are expected to decline by $ 59 billion in 2021 compared to 2019, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) and Kalibri Labs today.

For the 20 largest destinations in the United States, hotel business travel revenue is expected to collapse by 80%, from $ 38 billion in 2019 to $ 7.6 billion in 2021, according to data from the AHLA.

The largest destination, the New York City subway, is expected to experience an 88% collapse in annual hotel business travel revenue, from $ 4.6 billion in 2019 to $ 531 million in 2021.

In Orlando, the second destination in 2019, annual hotel business travel revenue is expected to collapse 81%, from $ 2.8 billion in 2019 to $ 518 million in 2021.

The third-largest destination, the Washington DC metro, is expected to experience an 86% collapse in hotel business travel revenue, from $ 2.7 billion in 2019 to $ 371 million in 2021.

Here are the 20 most important destinations in terms of hotel business travel revenue in 2019, the total revenue projected for the year 2021 and the percentage difference:

20 top business travel destinations Hotel business travel revenues, in millions of dollars % Diving
2019 2021 planned
new York 4,560 531 -88%
Orlando 2,796 518 -81%
Washington, DC Metro 2,741 371 -86%
Angels 2,683 752 -72%
San Francisco 2,531 178 -93%
Chicago 2,528 346 -86%
Las Vegas 2 326 670 -71%
Boston 1,672 191 -89%
Atlanta 1,671 491 -71%
Dallas 1,611 460 -71%
San Diego 1,611 395 -76%
Hawaiian Islands 1,530 346 -77%
Phoenix 1,349 380 -72%
Miami 1,327 four hundred ninety seven -63%
Houston 1,291 412 -68%
Seattle 1,241 193 -84%
San jose 1 227 176 -86%
Anaheim 1 155 256 -78%
Denver 1,087 237 -78%
Nashville 981 238 -76%
Total 37 919 7640 -80%

This analysis follows AHLA’s survey of business travelers, released two weeks ago, which found that among growing cases of COVID-19, 67% of business travelers planned to do less. of travel, 52% were likely to cancel their existing travel plans without rescheduling, and 60% planned to postpone existing travel plans.

The fifth destination in the above table, San Francisco, is expected to experience a 93% collapse in hotel business travel revenue, from $ 2.5 billion in 2019 to $ 178 million in 2021, according to AHLA.

At Moscone Center, San Francisco’s convention center, there was virtually nothing planned for the rest of the year to begin with – just four events. At least one of them, the 64th annual International Auto Show in November, has already been canceled.

Another, the 76th annual meeting of the American Society for Head Surgery (ASSH) is still scheduled for September 30 to October 2, but with a “simplified schedule” and an “online participation option.”

The Cannabis Business Summit & Expo 2021 was supposed to take place in early August but has been postponed to mid-December, and everyone is keeping their fingers crossed.

The SEMICON WEST conference and the Design Automation Conference (DAC) were scheduled to take place jointly in February of this year, but have been rescheduled for December.

So some conferences are starting to pop up, and it looks like they’re going to take place, but potential attendees are reluctant and organizers are wary.

This is the situation everywhere. Conference planners try to bring people together and bring souls to the huge convention centers, and they do, but it’s difficult and slow.

The reluctance of companies to send employees to conferences and even to host conferences is also reflected in the still woefully low attendance.

In the United States, companies still had not returned in large numbers to the office and the official dates of return to the office announced by the large companies – whatever format this return to the office would have taken, of 1 day by day. week to 5 days a week from bell to bell – continues to be pushed back.

Office occupancy, as measured by workers actually showing up at the desk, has struggled to recover from terribly low levels, but in the past two months it has relapsed. According to Kastle Systems, the 10-city average is down to 31% from what it was before the pandemic, meaning it’s down 69% from good times:

The longer business travel and office occupancy is prolonged by video calling and working from home, the more people discover how to make it work and be productive, and the more they adjust their lives around it, the more it will be. hard forever. return to the Old Normal.

Some of those business trips and some of these office occupations will certainly return, but it is becoming more and more doubtful that the Old Normal was even such a good idea to begin with, and there are now initiatives going on all over the place. around to figure out what sort of a new normal might look like.

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