COVID-19 lays waste to 240,000 hotel rooms

AlphaBeta’s tracker on the Australian economy revealed that Australia’s travel industry has been one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, suffering an 84% decline in spending:

Accordingly, the Tourism Accommodation Association estimates over 300 Australian hotels have closed their doors in the past month because of the COVID-19 lockdown and bans on international travel. They include 18 of the 34 hotels operated by Intercontinental Hotels Group or its franchisees and the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne, while hotel analysts STR estimates over 240,000 hotel rooms are either closed or unoccupied.

Michael Johnson, the New South Wales CEO of the TAA, says some of the hotels that have closed down may never re-open.

The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers

$1 for your first month, then:

$24.99 / month

$249 / year

Cancel at any time through our billing provider, Stripe

Share

About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.