Marriott International has reopened all of its hotels in China and is seeing a steady recovery in the United States, its CEO Arne Sorenson said on Monday June 1.
Shares of the hotel operator, which owns the Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis luxury brands, rose as much as 8.1% to $95.64 in afternoon trading after Sorenson said that the occupancy rate in China was 40% currently, up from 7% to 8% in February, when COVID-19 started spreading.
"It's not just leisure travel growing, but it is business travel. Chinese are flying again," Sorenson said at a Goldman Sachs conference.
US Hotels
In the United States, Marriott's hotels that remained open crossed the 20% occupancy threshold and continue to see an improvement, Sorenson said.
"The [US] hotels that are performing strongest are those that are most dependent on drive to business," he said.
The company had an occupancy rate of approximately 12% in North America in April, with 16% of its hotels closed temporarily.
However, Sorenson warned that it could take Marriott a few years to get back to levels of occupancy seen in 2019, when its global occupancy rate was 71%.
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