Italian Hotel Market

Italy: Hotel Market Sentiment Survey

Horwath HTL Italy conducted this survey in collaboration with the Italian Hotel Association to evaluate the current and medium-term impacts of Covid-19 on the Italian hospitality industry. In general, it is commonly expected a heavy drop of performances in the first semester of 2020 compared to 2019, with more than 49% of respondents expecting a decrease of more than 80% of Total Revenues.

Only 5% of the respondents (mainly seasonal operators) expect the effects to disappear by September, while 46% of respondents foresee the return to ‘operating normality’ only by 2021.

To support the recovery, the Italian Hotel Industry demands a governmental back up with urgent and incisive measures such as the cutting of regional and state taxes, the reduction of labor costs, improvement of the flexibility of the labour market.

Key Findings

• The overall sentiment on post-Covid recovery is generally negative
• In the first five months of 2020 the hotel overnight stays decreased of -63% compared to the same period in 2019
• Only 16% of surveyed hotels were fully operational, with over 60% of respondents expecting a drop in Occupancy Rates and Total Revenues higher than 70% in the first semester of 2020
• The demand segments expected first to reach, or exceed, the pre-Covid-19 levels are the Leisure segments, both FIT and Groups, mainly driven by domestic travellers
• Besides setting new hygiene standards & procedures, about a third of the hotels favored measures such as restructuring organizational structure, the renegotiation of contracts with suppliers, and investments in digital marketing, with only few respondents postponing planned investments.