STR data for 26 April through 2 May 2020 showed slightly higher U.S. hotel occupancy compared with previous weeks.
The black line in the chart is 2009 – the worst year for hotels since the Great Depression.
“Week-to-week comparisons showed a third consecutive increase in room demand, which provides further hope that early-April was the performance bottom,”
TSA (Transport Security Administration) numbers have indeed ticked up and are at the highest level since March 30th.
“At the same time, this past week was the first to show solid evidence of leisure demand as weekend occupancy grew in states that have significantly eased mitigation efforts.”
A lot of traffic is starting to return to normal – fast food, gasoline stations and auto shops have all come back.
Indeed fuel demand has started to tick up as well.
Spending is also picking up (likely helped by government support).
Peaks have normalised in grocery stores and big box retail.
One interesting point here is that some food companies have pointed out that buying big multi-packs for stocking vs. single serve has hurt margins (page 6 here).
Home improvement stores and outdoor trails are still seeing traffic much higher than February.
Bars, restaurants, offices, clothing stores, furniture stores, movie theatres and gyms are still at lows.
“Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.”
“Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.”
They comb company transcripts for interesting quotes.
A few from the latest one.
“I’ve been so impressed with the Disney+ execution. Over 20 years of watching different businesses, incumbents, like Blockbuster and Walmart and all these companies, I’ve never seen such a good execution of the incumbent learning the new way and mastering it. And then to have them achieve over 50 million in six months, it’s stunning. So to see both the execution and the numbers line up, my hats off to them.” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings
“Thus far through April, our in-patient admissions are running about 30% below the prior year. Our emergency room visits are running about 50% below prior year as our in-patient surgeries. Our hospital based outpatient surgeries are running about 70% below our prior year as most elective procedures have been deferred. We have started to see these volume declines stabilize over the past week.” HCA CFO Bill Rutherford
“There hasn’t been enough debate about ability to make billions of doses. And for the record, we have 10,000 people producing over a billion doses right now of our own vaccine portfolio. This is not easy to do.“ Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson
