Omicron Pushes Hotel Industry to Look for Hard Lessons From Delta Variant

One thing is clear for the hotel business heading into winter amid the emergence of a new coronavirus variant: Leisure hotels will continue to be the best-performing assets for several more months. 

But this doesn’t have to mean hotel owners should write off all expectations of business travel.

Government and health officials around the world for the last week doubled down on the talking point it is too early to gauge what impact the Omicron variant might have on the already stop-and-start nature of the global economic recovery. Omicron was first detected last week and arrives on the heels of the Delta variant that fueled a late summer surge of new cases that pushed back the anticipated return of in-person work and corporate travel. 

While leaders aren’t ready to draw parallels between the two variants, the hotel industry should look to Delta as a road map for the next few months in strategizing for winter business.

“The Delta variant was a speed bump in the road to recovery, but it was not a roadblock. It probably pushed the trajectory of recovery back sort of by two months, and it was certainly more seen on the business and the group side, where you have nervous HR directors and corporate risk departments,” said Patrick Scholes, a managing director of lodging and leisure equity research at Truist Securities. “It’s too early to say what exactly may happen here, but it certainly doesn’t incentivize already nervous HR directors and risk managers to say, ‘Hey, let’s accelerate our return.'”

Even if the science around Omicron’s likely impact won’t be available for anothe