Singapore Q1 2021 hotel performance update

Compared with its initial lockdown of 2020, Singapore continues to operate with lessened pandemic restrictions: face masks, F&B limitations, tracing, and little travel. There is hope the country will open further in Q3, as 25% of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. Continued, heavy financial support, particularly toward the travel and tourism sector, also adds optimism for an improved Q3.

To set the stage for the future, let’s look at how Q1 2021 compared with previous quarters.

1. Historically speaking, the first quarter is typically strong for Singapore, behind only peak season (Q3) during normal trading conditions. During Q1 2021, hotel occupancy levels were close to 65%, almost 9 points higher than Q1 2020.

2. ADR in 2020 didn’t drop until restrictions tightened toward the end of Q1, when normal demand disappeared and was replaced by quarantine demand. For the remainder of 2020, ADR was then sitting just north of SGD100—a rate level similar to Q1 2021.

3. As a clear sign of growth, Saturdays have reached December 2020 ADR levels. This represented a new peak, injected with holiday staycations.

4. Saturdays now outperform Tuesdays (the current lowest weekday) by an average of 18% (or 12 percentage points), and the Easter long weekend showed that the extra Friday holiday can drive good local demand, outperforming Easter Saturday.

Looking ahead, we expect ADR to continue a slow climb, as more high-end hotels have stopped taking quarantine guests at low rates and allotment of 100% occupancy. This will spread the domestic occupancy further and limit growth in that area somewhat, but gently move rates upwards.

Q2 is historically the weakest quarter in terms of occupancy and ADR, so if you compare with historic charts, the data will look slightly better in this quarter due to that reason.

For those participating with STR, we will soon look at where occupancy is headed for those hotels who are not quarantine facilities—to measure current domestic volumes, but also historic data and future hotel performance via occupancy on the books.

If you are in the Asia Pacific region and not yet working with STR, please reach out to apsales@str.com. We have plenty of solutions to offer, including Monthly P&L and Forward STAR.

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