Meeting Industry Recovery Outlook 2022-2024, Q2 2022 Update
“What a difference a quarter makes,” was how Kristi White, Knowland chief product officer, opened the industry recovery webinar for Q2 2022. This week Knowland released its quarterly event activity forecast for Q2 2022, with an accompanying webinar that was attended by more than 100 hoteliers.
Listen to the webinar and download the presentation slides here to gain even more insight into the data.
During the webinar, Kristi spoke about the changes we have seen over the past quarter, and what a difference a quarter makes. At the end of Q1, the industry was recovered at only 49.4%. June hit 80.1% recovery and YTD we are now at 62.6%.
Additionally, Kristi reported that holiday recovery is rebounding faster. Last year, a holiday would throw off numbers for 4-6 weeks. Since Easter, each holiday has only taken two weeks to hit the previous peak. This is in line with the seasonality we saw pre-pandemic. Even with the concerns around the newest variant, events recovered after the 4th of July.
Q2 outperformed the forecast by 25.8%. Each month grew over the prior month. Both the overall U.S. and the Top 25 Markets realized a significant shift in performance. A breakdown of the details is below:
- U.S. Markets Recovery Forecast update – Since the forecast in April, the outlook for the U.S. has been raised from 58.3 percent recovery by the end of 2022 to 72.1 percent recovery. Meeting levels will recover to 106.3 percent of 2019 levels in 2023 and 115.7 percent in 2024.
- Top 25 Markets Recovery Forecast update – For eleven markets, the recovery forecast improved from the last projection in April 2022, including Anaheim, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Nashville, New Orleans, Oahu Island, Orlando, San Diego, and Seattle. In four markets, the recovery forecast was lowered including Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Washington DC. The remaining Top 25 markets are unchanged from February.
- Recovery by the end of 2022: Four markets will be fully recovered by the end of 2022: Phoenix, Dallas, Tampa, and Nashville. Dallas and Nashville are new additions to this list from April. Three markets will be above 80 percent recovery: Atlanta, Anaheim, and Miami. Anaheim is a new entry into this category with this updated forecast. Fourteen markets will be between 50 and 80 percent recovery. Only Norfolk, Oahu Island, Philadelphia, and Seattle are forecasted to be less than 50 percent recovered by the end of 2022. Norfolk, Philadelphia, and Seattle shifted into this category while Detroit and Chicago moved into the 50-80 percent category.
- Significant recovery in 2023: An additional seven markets will achieve 100 percent or greater recovery including Anaheim, Denver, Miami, San Diego, Washington DC, Atlanta, and New Orleans. Six will reach 90 percent or better recovery: Boston, San Francisco, Houston, New York, Orlando, and Chicago. The remaining markets will fall between 75 and 90 percent recovery.
- Closer to normal in 2024: 23 of the 25 markets will achieve 100 percent or greater recovery by 2024. Philadelphia and Detroit will achieve 90 or better percent recovery during 2024.
Kristi said, “Each month of the second quarter realized significant growth. With the exception of a few markets, growth exceeded predictions resulting in a shift in the MRF. Even with ongoing concerns about the economy and COVID variants, the industry is rebounding in an unprecedented way. In Q1, U.S meetings and events volume was flat with the forecast while Q2 overperformed by 25.8 percent more actualized meetings and events. Corporate events are leading the charge in this recovery with several markets already recovered at more than 90 percent of 2019 levels in this segment.”
The MRF demonstrates projected industry recovery patterns and is based on Knowland’s proprietary data and regression models leveraging almost 20 million global events over the last 15 years. Click here to learn more.