Billionaire investor Barry Sternlicht told CNBC on Wednesday that the recovery of US travel is under way – at least in parts of the country such as Florida – after a slowdown caused by Covid.
“We see that all this renewed demand will return. It will be a frenzy this summer,” Starwood Capital Group president and CEO of Miami told Squawk Box.
For example, data on the presence of Miami restaurants in OpenTable show that many days in March were higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
Sternlicht also said that one of his company’s hotels in the area, 1 Hotel South Beach, is “before February of this year, before 2019”.
His comments on Wednesday offer a perspective on the recovery of the US economy following the coronavirus crisis, which has devastated sectors such as leisure and hospitality. In February, the number of people engaged in leisure and hospitality activities was still almost 3.5 million less than in February 2020, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Petersburg. Louis.
However, expectations for significant economic improvement in the coming months are common. Last week, the Fed raised its projections on the US gross domestic product, forecasting a 6.5% increase in 2021.
“The recovery is in full swing,” Sternlicht said, pointing to recent comments by President Joe Biden that states must open Covid vaccination eligibility to all adults by May 1.
Vaccinations are considered critical to enable recovery, giving Americans more confidence to engage in economic activities they otherwise avoided during the pandemic, such as vacations and travel.
As of Tuesday, about 25 percent of the U.S. population received at least one dose of the vaccine and nearly 14 percent were fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sternlicht believes that bottled demand will also increase the apartment market in the coming months.
“There are 5 million people living with their parents. They all return to their apartments as soon as they return to work and people return to their offices,” said Sternlicht, whose Starwood Capital focuses on investing in global real estate. , hotel management and the energy sector. Sternlicht also launched Starwood Hotels & Resorts in 1995, which was acquired 20 years later by Marriott International.
“You see people saying they want to meet their people in person. … One of our companies has signed a $ 15,000 lease in Germany from Berlin to Berlin, ”Sternlicht added.
He compared the desire to be in the office to those who like to watch movies in cinemas, despite the advent of digital streaming. “The truth is, it’s a social event,” he said. “People will go back to the theaters and go back to the office.”