Hotels Feel the Pain of a Glut of Empty Rooms and Lower Room Rates
by ilene - July 5th, 2009 10:20 pm
Sign up for a free subscription to Phil’s Stock World Report, click here!
Hotels Feel the Pain of a Glut of Empty Rooms and Lower Room Rates
Courtesy of Mish
Hotels are slashing rates to attract customers. However, it’s not working and Resorts are Suffering From Financial Strains. From Arizona Central …
A glut of empty rooms and panic pricing are taking a serious toll on hotel and resort owners in the Phoenix area.
Foreclosure proceedings were initiated against seven financially squeezed properties, two of them brand new, in the first half of the year. That’s just one less than in all of 2008 and more than double the number in 2007, according to Ion Data, a Mesa real-estate research firm.
There are other signs of financial stress, too, including major liens filed against resorts that recently expanded or renovated, and big projects being put on hold, some midstream.
The worst part: Many experts say the foreclosure woes are likely in the early stages given the volume of big-ticket deals during the boom years, the severity of the hotel downturn in Greater Phoenix and few signs business will solidly rebound anytime soon.
"This is probably still the tip of the iceberg," said Robert Hayward, principal with the Phoenix hospitality consulting and research firm Warnick & Co.
Metro Phoenix, usually a magnet for vacationers and big meetings, continues to post some of the industry’s biggest declines in occupancy, average daily rate and other measures, with many at the lowest levels on record, according to Smith Travel Research.
Preliminary figures show June occupancy was about 45 percent, nearly 10 percentage points, or 17 percent, below June 2008, when occupancy was already hurting. Most are calling it an industry depression, rather than recession.
Richard Warnick of Warnick & Co. said he’d be surprised if nearly all hotels and resorts, here and across the country, weren’t in technical default on their loans, falling below required minimums on debt service coverage, for example, given the sad state of travel. That is often a precursor to more serious financial problems that prompt lenders to foreclose.
Nationally, the number of delinquent hotel loans has been climbing sharply since the recession deepened last fall. The delinquency rate jumped from 0.3 percent of so-called hotel commercial mortgage-backed securities loans in September to 2.8 percent in May, according to Realpoint data provided by real-estate