As the black swan of the COVID-19 pandemic began flapping its unwelcome wings in early 2020, it started to dawn on the hotel sector globally that it was likely to be one of the hardest-hit industries of all.

As countries closed borders to stem the spread of the disease, aircraft taxied into mothballs and businesspeople headed for their homes — and their computer screens — to conduct business, stunned hoteliers and asset owners realised that the unthinkable was at hand: virtually no one was going to be staying at their hotels, for an indeterminate time.

It was an existential rout: the industry’s clients were not flying. According to statistics firm Statista, COVID-19 cut the number of flights worldwide by 58 percent in 2020, to 16.9 million.

But as COVID-19 receded and countries decided (some sooner, some later) to at least try to live with it despite new variants, air traffic began to recover. Statista says global flights lifted 18.9 percent in 2021, to 20