PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Latin America’s construction pipeline stands at 604 projects/104,275 rooms, down 14 per cent by projects and 16 per cent by rooms, year-over-year (YOY), according to Lodging Econometrics’ (LE’s) Q1 ’21 Latin America Hotel Construction Pipeline Trend Report.
As COVID-19 variants continue to spread, countries in Latin America are forced to delay hotel-construction projects, resulting in the lowest project and room counts the region has seen since Q2 2012.
In response, the region’s government organizations and health associations are ramping up vaccine efforts to boost vaccination rates and achieve herd immunity.
Chile has the highest vaccination rate in the region, with 44.69 per cent of residents partially vaccinated and 37.33 per cent fully vaccinated. However, as of May 10, only 10.88 per cent of Mexican residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine and 7.23 per cent of residents are fully vaccinated.
Currently, there are 323 projects/60,332 rooms under construction at Q1’21 close. Although the number of projects in this stage remains the same YOY, it shows a five-per-cent increase in rooms. There has been an 11-per-cent decrease in the number of projects scheduled to start construction in the next 12 months, with a small increase since Q4’20, adding up to 181 projects/27,773 rooms. Projects in the preparatory stage experienced a 43-per-cent decline YOY, totaling 100 projects/16,170 rooms.
Over the last four quarters, 56 new hotels/10,806 rooms opened in Latin America, with 15 openings occurring in the first quarter of 2021. In total, the count of open and operating hotels in Latin America stands at 11,202 hotels/1,183,365 rooms. LE is predicting 95 projects/16,781 rooms to open by the end of 2021 and 124 projects/20,027 rooms to open in 2022.
Hotel franchise companies with the largest construction pipelines in Latin America are Marriott International with 103 projects/16,245 rooms, Hilton Worldwide with 98 projects/14,090 rooms, AccorHotels with 96 projects/12,666 rooms and IHG with 58 projects/6,792 rooms.
