Early Impacts of COVID-19 on Maine’s Hospitality Sector in 2020

Gabe, Todd and Crawley, Andrew (2020): Early Impacts of COVID-19 on Maine’s Hospitality Sector in 2020.

Abstract

This paper examines Maine’s hospitality sector in 2020, with a focus on the impacts of COVID-19 and the potential trajectory of hospitality sales during the second half of the year. The sector experienced its largest COVID-related impacts in April—with 80 percent lower lodging sales and 58 percent lower restaurant sales compared with the same month in 2019—whereas the sector’s performance in May and June indicate smaller percentage reductions compared with the same months last year. Our analysis shows three possible scenarios for the second half of 2020, which have annual hospitality sales that range from an estimated $2.5 billion to $3.1 billion (compared with $4.3 billion in 2019 hospitality sales). Estimated daily sales in the month of July suggest that Maine’s hospitality sector will experience a recovery that lies between our “moderate” and “stalled” scenarios, which would equate to between $2.5 billion and $2.8 billion in overall 2020 restaurant and lodging sales.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Covid-19, Hospitality Sales, Tourism, Maine
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I12 - Health Behavior; L - Industrial Organization > L8 - Industry Studies: Services > L83 - Sports ; Gambling ; Restaurants ; Recreation ; Tourism; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R1 - General Regional Economics > R11 - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

References

Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Michael Stepner, and the Opportunity Insights Team. 2020. “Real-Time Economics: A New Platform to Track the Impacts of COVID-19 on People, Businesses, and Communities Using Private-Sector Data.” Mimeo.

Gabe, Todd, and Andrew Crawley. 2020a. “Impacts of COVID-19 on Maine’s Hospitality Sector.” School of Economics, University of Maine, Staff Paper 638, June 2020.

Gabe, Todd, and Andrew Crawley. 2020b. “A Note on the Reduction in Hospitality Sales Prior to a State’s COVID-related Stay-at-Home Order: Evidence from Maine, USA.” MPRA Paper 102362, August 2020.