People must have a place to live; consumers a place to shop; businesses a place to conduct commerce; manufacturers a place to make, store and distribute their wares. But when the economy goes bad, one of the first forms of commerce to suffer is travel — both for leisure and business — and that is a dagger for the hotel business.
Never has the hotel business been slammed so quickly and sharply as during the current coronavirus crisis, which saw its occupancy rate shrivel to just 24.4 percent in April, according to data from STR Inc., down from 71.2 percent one year prior. Though occupancy has since recovered to something closer to 50 percent as of August, that was not good enough to stop the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index from sliding by 7.1 percent in September. Through the first nine months of 2020, the stock index is down 36.8 percent.
At the risk of piling on the bad news for investors, Trepp, a firm that tracks the mortgage-backed securities market, reported tha
