Hotels Steal Booking Momentum From Vacation Rentals: Skift Recovery Index

Hotel bookings are now consistently outperforming bookings for vacation rentals around the world, analysis by Skift Research shows.

The Skift Recovery Index analyzes the performance of the travel industry for 22 countries, based on data we collect from 19 data partners.

In 16 of these countries, future hotel booking levels are now higher than vacation rental bookings. This is in start contrast to 2020, and even in January 2021 still only two countries (China and Indonesia) saw higher levels of hotel bookings than rental bookings.

For all countries, the compound annual growth rate during the first eight months of 2021 was higher for hotel bookings than for vacation rentals (for Australia they were the same), indicating the strong rise that hotel bookings have made.

We should, of course, keep in mind that most countries still see bookings, rates, and occupancies far below 2019 levels, but this shows that hotels have taken back the momentum from rentals.

According to the latest update of the Skift Recovery Index, August saw the recovery score decline by six points, after it had already stalled in July. A look at the country scores, however, which are available here, shows that this decline is mostly due to struggles in especially large tourism markets like the U.S. and China.

More analysis about the impact of the Delta variant can be found in the Skift Recovery Index: August 2021 Highlights, available to Skift Research subscribers.