Just one in five Nashville hotel rooms were occupied in the month of April, and visitors were paying half as much as they did in the heady months before the coronavirus — just $71.35 a night, on average.
The hotel data tracking firm STR has been publishing monthly statistics on Nashville since 2013, and never have the numbers been this low. Revenue for hotels is down 89% from the same month last year.
“April is probably the hardest hit month since we have been tracking,” says Butch Spyridon, CEO of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation. “The good news – if there is any – is that we bottomed out in the first week of April and have seen numbers improving each subsequent week. It will be a slow methodical climb back up, but we are seeing very encouraging early signs of recovery.”
The total number of available rooms was sliced by 6,000 in April as some of the city’s largest hotels temporarily closed rather than attempt to maintain operations amid the height of the pandemic. Gaylord Opryland, by far the largest, closed in late March and has not announced a reopening date. The Omni Nashville plans to reopen June 22.
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