To say the past year has been a roller-coaster for the lodging industry may be a bit of an understatement.
For example, as some tourist destinations were decimated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic the past 18 months, the city of Sedona saw its best year ever in terms of sales and tax dollars generated. But with ongoing concern about traveling, as well as restrictions to other countries, what does the future hold during a pandemic?
During the Sept. 14 Sedona Lodging Council meeting, Corinne Doll, an associate market manager for Expedia, gave an update on what could be expected going into the fall. She pointed out that since everyone doesn’t book through Expedia or their other companies, some data may not reflect what all resorts have seen or are currently seeing.
“Obviously COVID brought a significant shift to booking behavior,” she said. “People are flying less, driving more and looking for extra cleaning precautions and flexibility when it comes to their bookings.”
In March, Expedia did a nationwide survey, gathering more than 16,000 responses to learn more about what travelers are looking for. The survey showed that overall 44% of responders said they refrained from going on vacation in 2020, while that figure bumped to 51% for those 40 and older.
“We saw that younger people were willing to get back into travel a lot earlier than those in the older generations,” Doll said. “They felt more comfortable with it so we saw a lot of younger couples traveling, especially here in Sedona.”
In spring and summer this year, Doll said there was a lot of pent-up demand for travel, and that showed in Sedona compared to other destinations.
That same March survey asked people their preferred travel destinations over the upcoming 18 months with multiple answers. About 45% said a beach destination, 36% said a major city, 33% wished to go to a small town or village, 25% rural area and 22% the mountains.
“Our room nights hit all-time highs in March,” she said. “We heavily outpaced 2019 in room nights and ADRs [average daily rates] as I’m sure you guys know. We continued to outpace 2019 in the summer but since March we have seen a steady deceleration. Room nights are down but ADRs continue to climb.”
Doll said because most wanted to stay closer to home, those booking through Expedia to stay in Sedona have predominantly been coming from Phoenix, Tucson, Scottsdale, other Arizona cities, the Los Angeles area and Las Vegas.
“There’s a lot of drive-in travel, which matches a lot of these trends,” she said. “People are looking to get outside and Sedona is a great place to do that.”
Those same visitors are looking to stay a little longer than they may have in the past but when doing so, they are looking for incentives. Those include a discount, free breakfast, upgraded room and drink or food vouchers.
As for the near future, Doll said Expedia anticipates a drop in hotel stays, which will require hotels to evaluate their current rates to see if they are sustainable.
She said travel and hotel stays in California, for example, is far better than this time last year but not nearly back to pre-pandemic numbers.
“We’re not seeing them shut down as much but we are seeing significant rate drops in a lot of these other competing markets — they’re much lower than here,” she said. “So if people are looking to travel, they’re going to see rates $100 to a couple hundred less in parts of California like San Diego or Las Vegas. It makes them more attractive.”
