Hilton Worldwide currently estimates its system-wide
first-quarter comparable revenue per available room (RevPAR) to have declined
between 22 per cent and 24 per cent year over year, according to a Thursday
company filing with the US Security and Exchange Commission. The firm estimated
March systemwide RevPAR to be down between 56 per cent to 58 per cent. The
results are preliminary and unaudited and may change by the time the company
holds its first-quarter earnings call, the date of which has not yet been
announced.
Regionally, Hilton expects first-quarter Asia Pacific RevPAR
to be down 43 per cent to 45 per cent year over year, and down 74 per cent to
76 per cent in March, despite some early signs of recovery in the region,
particularly in China. Hilton's occupancy in China currently stands at
approximately 22 per cent, up from 9 per cent in early February, and with more
than 130 of the nearly 150 hotels in China that had been closed now reopened.
Preliminary first-quarter RevPAR results for the Americas as well as Europe,
the Middle East and Africa are down 20 per cent to 22 per cent for all three
regions. For March, EMEA is anticipated to show slightly worse results than the
Americas, with RevPAR down 62 per cent to 64 per cent compared with a decline
in the Americas of 54 per cent to 56 per cent.
As of 14 April, Hilton has temporarily closed nearly 1,000
hotels, or approximately 16 per cent of its global inventory. Regionally, that
amounts to 12 per cent of hotels in the Americas, 60 per cent in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa, and 15 per cent of Asia Pacific hotels. The company
noted in the filing that it was "not able to estimate the date that these
suspensions of hotel operations will be lifted”.