By Thomas Paulson, Head of Market Insights Given the recent news from the airlines that bookings were dropping and the deceleration in longer-term visits to Hilton’s brands as shown in Advan, it wasn’t surprising to hear Hilton cut guidance for the year. CEO Chris Nassetta said, “We reported system-wide RevPAR growth of 2.5% year-over-year, driven by strong momentum from the end of last year that carried into 2025 and supported solid performance in both January and February.

With all the adults over 16 now being eligible for COVID-19 vaccines, the U.S. is on track to vaccinate 70% of its population by mid to late June. The vaccination pace has been significantly increased on a weekly basis since the start back in the second half of December 2020, hitting now an average of over 3 million Americans getting vaccinated daily. In regards to the new COVID-19 cases, after the recent drop from the pick in January new cases have been plateaued, and most recently have started to tick up a bit.

Foot traffic analysis for hotels around the US showed vastly different trends over the holiday season. Compared to the first week of November, hotels in Florida saw a foot traffic uptick of 20% in the week of December 22 - 28, and up 40% in the week between Christmas and New Year, as Americans flocked to warmer climates. Colorado hotels also saw a healthy increase in traffic of 19% in the final week of the year as skiers took to the slopes over the holidays.

As the US restaurant sector starts to get back on its feet, we have been monitoring foot traffic numbers with interest to see which are turning around most quickly. The 3 chains we analyzed saw significant falls in traffic between mid-March and the end of April. This was most dramatic for Darden, where foot traffic fell to almost zero given the sit-down nature of the chain’s restaurants. Yum brands saw a 60% fall in foot traffic at the nadir and Chipotle a 70% drop.

Each company trades based on different metrics, but it is fair to say that most consumer discretionary companies, especially those with a growing footprint, are judged by their comparable store sales. This is defined differently by each company, as it is not a standardized GAAP metric, but it typically means “we only measure the performance of stores that have been open for a certain amount of time”, usually anywhere from 3 to 13 months, depending on the company.

Department Stores, Restaurants, Malls, all continue growing their traffic on Black Friday on a year over year basis. The growth rate has decelerated a bit, but it’s still in the healthy double-digit numbers, from an already high base. Only Hotels showed negative growth, but less so than in prior years – a weighted average of -1% vs -3% and -2% in 2018 and 2017 respectively. Below are a couple of graphs that illustrate the traffic.

It is everyone’s favorite game to perfectly forecast earnings by looking in the rear view mirror. We are trying really hard not to fall into the same trap ourselves. Here is why: it is very easy to make random predictions, some of which come true, and then look back and cherry-pick the ones that you were right. Really, a monkey can do it. If you give them a banana for each correct prediction they would get pretty fat, fast!

Is Gamestop’s traffic up? Is Jimmy John’s traffic growing more than Subway’s? Every day some new analysis of cellphone location data portrays to measure the exact foot traffic in one or all of these, and every day we emit a collective gasp at the incredulous claims. Let’s get this quickly out of the way: Gamestop traffic is trending down; Jimmy John is down too and that trend has not changed for 3 years straight; it’s also worse than Subway’s downward trend, except for some bright, but inconsistent, spots in 2019.