Skift Take
China's drop in hotel performance due to an outbreak in the southern part of the country may only be temporary. But it is a reminder that travel's recovery momentum is erratic — even in a country with tough control measures and strong vaccine distribution.
A surge of new coronavirus cases in China around the southern city of Guangzhou halted the country’s status as the world leader in the hotel industry’s recovery from the pandemic.
Both the U.S. and the UK vaulted ahead of China last week in terms of which country's hotel industry performed best, a notable feat given China has largely dominated the travel comeback from the health crisis. The average hotel occupancy rate last week in China was just over 55 percent while it was 63 percent in the UK and nearly 62 percent in the U.S., according to STR.
The setback is expected to only be a brief one, but it underlines just how volatile the travel recovery can be even with greater vaccine distribution around the world as well as China’s tighter control on outbreaks.
“[The] U.S. [is] now firmly in the lead,” Richard Cl
