The company evaluates and predicts revenue performance in the digital marketplace, but in addition to the traditional metrics of hotel-collected revenue per available room (RevPAR), average daily rate (ADR) and occupancy, its HIPO platform also displays metrics such as net revenue, cost of acquisition, length of stay, booking lead time, loyalty contribution and online reputation.
Alongside the rise in bookings through the loyalty channel, HIPO's data shows that when looking at bookings by source of business, brand.com and OTA bookings each grew +6.6% year-on-year to 24% and 15% respectively.
But guest-paid RevPAR and contribution to operating profit and expense (COPE) RevPAR (the revenue per available room based on the total room revenue paid by guests, after transaction-specific direct reservation costs have been deducted) decreased -1.6% and -1.39% yearon-year, respectively, driven by occupancy declines of -1.9% YOY, and indicating only modest ADR growth.
Nationally, HIPO shows length of stays decreased by -2.67% to 1.94 days during the first half of 2019, with each of the top ten metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) across the US all showing single-digit declines in this metric. Booking lead time held steady at 23.6 days (up +0.05%) across all markets, chain scales and channels.
"While it's encouraging to see guest paid ADR hold steady, or even show modest growth in some chain scales there is some concern or trepidation in the RevPAR figures based on declining occupancy and very modest ADR growth in most markets," says Mark Lomanno, partner and senior adviser at Kalibri Labs.
"Weakening industry fundamentals caused by the rapidly changing nature of today's lodging industry will require focused attention over the latter half of 2019 and into 2020," he acknowledges.