The U.S. hotel industry again reported year-over-year double-digit percentage declines in its three key performance indicators for the week ending March 28, according to STR.

Compared with the week ending March 30, 2019, last week's U.S. occupancy dropped 67.5 percent to 22.6 percent. Average daily rate dropped 39.4 percent to $79.92. Revenue per available room plummeted 80.3 percent to $18.05, making it the steepest weekly decline on record for STR.

"Year-over-year declines of this magnitude will unfortunately be the 'new normal' until the number of new Covid-19 cases slows significantly," said STR SVP of lodging insights Jan Freitag. "Occupancy continues to fall to unprecedented lows, with more than 75 percent of rooms empty around the nation last week. As projected in our U.S. forecast revision, 2020 will be the worst year on record for occupancy."

Earlier this week, STR and Tourism Economics revised their 2020 forecast, with RevPAR expected to decline 50.6 percent compared to 2019.

Aggregate data for the top 25 U.S. markets showed even larger year-over-year declines than the national average in occupancy (down 74.5 percent to 19.6 percent), ADR (down 43.9 percent to $89.71) and RevPAR (down 85.7 percent to $17.60). New Orleans reported the biggest decline in RevPAR at 92.8 percent, due primarily to the second-largest decrease in occupancy (84.9 percent) and ADR (52.3 percent). Oahu reported the steepest decline in occupancy (86.4 percent). Miami posted the largest decline in ADR (57.9 percent).

For the top 25 luxury and upper upscale markets, group occupancy once again was below 1 percent, at 0.7 percent, representing a year-over-year decline of 97.2 percent. Twenty-three of the cities showed close to 100 percent declines in group occupancy. New York and Philadelphia were the exceptions, with declines of 85.4 percent and 86.2 percent, respectively.

In a webinar last week following the release of data for the week ending March 21, Freitag noted that U.S. hotel occupancy "is not falling as quickly as it is in other countries or as it did in China." This could be because there is no federally mandated lockdown. People still were traveling, meaning some were not practicing social distancing. "It implies further that the uptick, the rebound, will take us much longer as there are still people who could get infected."

Still, Freitag expects the industry to begin to recover once the economy reignites and travel resumes. The China data is clear, he noted, adding that though the absolute occupancy level is still just 22 percent as hotels reopen, there is a slow acceleration from March 1 to March 23.

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