Jon Bortz, chairman, president, and CEO of Pebblebrook Hotel Trust (NYSE: PEB), participated in a video interview in conjunction with Nareit’s REITworld: 2020 Annual Conference.
Bortz commented that all but 14 of the REIT’s properties had reopened at the time of the interview, with portfolio occupancy running in the mid to upper 30% level.
“We’ve seen a really healthy recovery on the weekends. It’s weekdays where the challenge is because there’s a lack of business travel,” Bortz said. He noted that leisure travel had recovered to about 50% of pre-crisis levels.
Between now and mid-year 2021, which Bortz thought to be the earliest date at which medical progress on COVID-19 can be expected, “what we hope is more and more people will feel comfortable flying.”
“We recover a little bit each week and each month as we get into the spring in particular and then maybe by midyear we start to see a significantly greater amount of business travel come back—and in particular, group [travel] later in the year. Those are the two that are going to be the laggards and that represents about two-thirds of travel,” Bortz said.