Mexico’s hotel industry has been a rather unique case of linear performance recovery. While most countries have seen fluctuations in the metrics, Mexico has been on a steady ascent leading to a November that produced the country’s highest performance levels of the pandemic.
The country’s beach destinations, always popular on the international and domestic tourist trails, have been key to that recovery as restrictions on international entry have been limited to the state-level.
Timeline
The first two months of 2020 produced performance levels much aligned with the comparable months of 2019. In March and April, however, the pandemic impact became apparent and levels plummeted to historic lows—April’s 7.2% absolute occupancy was the worst for any month on record in Mexico.
From there, the market has seen steady and significant improvement in the metric, including an occupancy of 33.3% in November (33.3%). That level was the country’s highest since March (36.9%) but still 49.6% below last November.
Mexico experienced its lowest ADR (MXN1,026.96) and RevPAR (MXN77.86) levels in May and April, respectively. In November, metrics improved to their highest levels of the pandemic: ADR (MXN2,158.11) and RevPAR (MXN719.66). What was especially noteworthy, Mexico posted a year-over-year increase in ADR in three months since June, including growth of 4.2% in November.
Weekdays vs. weekends
Mexico’s performance is highest on Saturday compared with any other night of the week. This is like many regions around the world as leisure demand remains the primary driver of business.
On 14 November (Saturday), for example, Mexico saw occupancy of 41.2%. No other day that week produced occupancy above 36.5%.
Key Markets
In November, Tijuana posted the country’s highest occupancy level (48.0%) followed closely by beach destinations such as Puerto Vallarta (44.5%), Cancun (42.7%), Acapulco (42.1%) and Los Cabos (42.0%).
Urban destinations such as Chihuahua and Ciudad de Mexico posted the lowest occupancy level during the month.
