You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Neil, you may begin.
As always, I'm here with Jay H. Shah, our Chief Executive Officer; and Ashish Parikh, our Chief Financial Officer.
When we last spoke in late July, demand for travel and hotels was the highest since March 2020, and projections were shaping up for a very strong second half of the year.
The delta variant made for a choppy seasonal shift in demand in late August and early September, but we were able to meet our internal forecast each month through a combination of aggressive revenue management and strict cost controls, allowing us to drive strong GOP margins even compared to the same period in 2019.
Despite a slow start on the top line shortly after Labor Day, we were encouraged by the positive momentum we are seeing over the last few weeks, coinciding with the decline in COVID cases and notable green shoots indicating that travel is ramping up meaningfully.
TSA data shows the beginning in mid-September, we have seen consecutive weeks of more than 12 million travelers.
And if you zoom in on our markets, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, San Jose and Washington, D.C., have all seen a rebound over the last few weeks of at least 7.5% in air travel.
Additionally, Uber recently reported a 15% increase in airport rides during the last two weeks of September.
And U.S. car traffic in major cities like New York and Los Angeles was significantly higher in September versus August.
In New York, weekday ridership of trains and subways have each increased about 30% since the end of August.
While Times Square foot traffic reached a record high since the start of the pandemic with 270,000 people visiting last Saturday, 80% higher than the same day in 2020.
Robust leisure demand post-Labor Day is encouraging for the upcoming holiday season as well.
And our booking pace for weekends in New York City and the holiday weeks in South Florida and California is noteworthy.
And beginning next week, our borders will open to fully vaccinated international travelers.
One week after the announcement, airlines such as JetBlue and American, reported positive trends.
JetBlue said it had seen a 5 times increase in bookings to the U.S. from the U.K., while American noted it expects international revenues to surpass 2019 levels in December and throughout 2022.
On the hotel booking front, many OTAs have noticed an uptick of almost 20% international bookings in the week since the announcement in major feeder markets like New York City.
With an expectation for 2022 bookings to materially increase across the next several weeks.
The international demand is diverse, but Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Brazil and even several Asian countries are booking again.
Ash and I will discuss in more detail our top line and bottom line results.
But first, a quick recap of third quarter performance for our portfolio.
We began the third quarter on strong footing as our portfolio RevPAR ended July near $150, approximately 15% higher than June as peak summer travel translated into robust results across the portfolio.
The first half of August was equally strong.
But due to the delta variant and typical seasonality with the resumption of the new school year, demand began to moderate during the second half of August, which stretched through the middle of September after the Jewish holidays.
Despite the occupancy decline, our revenue managers continued their strategy of holding rates, resulting in our comparable portfolio ADR for the quarter coming in only 1% below third quarter 2019.
Rate integrity remains key to the lodging recovery and based on year-to-date performance from our resorts and our urban clusters, we believe strong ADRs will prove sustainable on a portfoliowide basis for years to come.
Our resorts portfolio was strong again this quarter as the group generated weighted average occupancy of 68% and ADR growth of 30%, leading to weighted average RevPAR growth of 20% compared to the third quarter 2019.
Performance this quarter continued to stem from robust demand in South Florida, despite what is typically the slowest period for travel to this region.
The Parrot Key Hotel and Villas was our best-performing asset during the third quarter from a RevPAR growth perspective as 71% occupancy and a $409 average daily rate resulted in a $290 RevPAR, which surpassed third quarter 2019 RevPAR by 73%.
The Keys continue to garner unprecedented demand, and we expect the Parrot Key to continue its robust performance into year-end.
Performance on Miami Beach was also encouraging as the Cadillac and the Winter Haven on South Beach each exceeded their third quarter 2019 occupancy, ADR and RevPAR levels.
Even in the more business-oriented submarket of Coconut Grove, we were able to drive 36% ADR growth during the quarter as we captured local business from a variety of industries, law, universities, financial services, consulting, technology, healthcare and advertising, which is leading to stronger weekday demand post-Labor Day.
Out in California, the Sanctuary Beach Resort continues to lead our resorts from a rate perspective as a $669 ADR and 78% occupancy resulted in 30% RevPAR growth versus the third quarter of 2019.
The Our Hotel Milo in Santa Barbara reported 22% RevPAR growth this quarter, recording 75% occupancy at a $446 average daily rate.
Both of these hotels set record ADR levels under our ownership last quarter during the peak travel season on the California Coast, further proving that the leisure traveler is not price-sensitive for high-quality, well-located, differentiated hotels.
Back East, our Annapolis Waterfront Hotel occupies an irreplaceable position on the Chesapeake Bay and was our strongest performing hotel from an occupancy perspective during the third quarter.
We recorded an 86% occupancy and an average daily rate of $332 last quarter, which led to a 24% RevPAR growth over the period.
Annapolis in the summer was primarily leisure transient but the hotel has seen significant demand continue post-Labor Day, highlighted by weddings, smaller conferences and corporate groups, collegiate sports and alumni reunions at the Naval Academy and the historic vote show that took place just a few weekends ago.
Our regional resort destinations have provided robust results for the portfolio year-to-date and continue to show strong pace heading into year-end.
But our core urban portfolio, 75% of our rooms has also seen a steady demand increase over the last several months.
Weekday ADRs in our urban portfolio exceeded $195 in July, surpassed $200 in August and ended September at approximately $225, 15% higher than July.
From June to September, our urban portfolio saw a 7.5% CAGR in weekday RevPAR, supported by notable increases in both rate and occupancy.
And weekday demand has continued to accelerate in the fourth quarter.
As the month-to-date ADRs in October are higher than the same time in September, with occupancy up approximately 650 basis points to 54%.
This performance has led to substantial weekday RevPAR growth over the last 30 days as RevPAR for our urban portfolio is up 15%, with increased demand across each of our major northeastern cities.
Despite the third quarter being predominantly leisure-driven, and the business transient recovery clearly slowed by the delta variant, we have seen a steady return of corporate business across our markets.
Airlines have reported that the larger corporate accounts are beginning to fly again and domestic business demand has rebounded to pre-delta levels or better.
And we are seeing the shift in our hotels.
After months of healthcare workers, sports teams, design and construction and other small- and medium-sized companies, we are now seeing the return of our more traditional corporate accounts midweek, Accenture, Deloitte, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group and General Dynamics remain active across our portfolio.
Our urban luxury hotels have enjoyed meaningful rate growth across the last several months, as the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia and the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown, outperformed our third quarter 2019 ADRs by 17% and 7%, respectively.
Demand at these assets was broad-based and supported by leisure and social groups such as weddings and entertainment over the last few months, the reopening of universities and parents weekends, and the blending of leisure and business travel in luxury.
But in September and October, we've seen an increase in corporate guests for stays and catering events, healthcare, consulting, financial services, media, software have all been gathering and traveling at our hotels.
Weekday trends have been clearly accelerating, but the return to more stable business travel is closely correlated with employees going back to the office and resuming traditional travel to conferences and group meetings.
Although many of the world's largest corporations have postponed their return to office plans, third-party data providers indicate that major cities like Boston and New York saw a 30% month-over-month increase in workers returning to the office in September.
And conversations with our corporate accounts indicate that we should continue to see a resumption in companies opening their doors and encouraging travel through the end of the year.
But anticipate the first quarter as the next inflection point in demand growth from the business traveler.
Gateway urban markets have been more impacted by this pandemic than any other segment, and offers the longest runway for growth as we look forward to the next several years of this cycle.
Last month, we saw the return of traditional major events in Manhattan, the U.S. Open, which benefited our assets in the JFK submarket.
Fashion Week, which led to the compression at our Hilton Garden Inn Tribeca.
And the UN General Assembly, we saw increased demand at our Hilton Garden Inn Midtown East from foreign delegates and secret service personnel.
Despite attendances below pre-pandemic levels, it was great to have these events back in person as they help drive hotel demand in Manhattan to its highest levels since the beginning of the pandemic.
And New York has more citywides occurring in Q4.
Comic Con took place a few weekends ago, the NYU Lodging Conference and the New York City Marathon is resuming next month, and several trade shows and medical conferences remain on schedule.
Pockets of corporate strength remain across our assets in Manhattan from the traditional accounts I noted earlier, but we believe they will continue to expand as more corporations reopen their offices.
With the first mover advantage of remaining open throughout the pandemic, our clustered sales effort in the marketplace should yield additional revenue opportunities.
New York City has historically been the market leader in occupancy and we remain confident that it will revert back to prior levels over the next few years with our operating and data advantage driving meaningful outperformance throughout the recovery.
During the last cycle, we had record demand for hotel rooms in New York, but year-over-year mid-single-digit supply growth resulted in a very challenging operating environment for owners.
Although we have seen new hotels open again this year with more on pace to open over the next 12 months, it is important to note that many hotels have permanently closed.
And although a few have recently reopened following the passage of the severance law in the city, the midterm supply picture looks very encouraging.
Based on our internal projections as well as some recent third-party studies, it is estimated that 10,000 keys may be removed from inventory for the foreseeable future, if not permanently by way of demolition, resizing or alternate use conversions.
When we factor in this in the analysis and the aforementioned new supply, net supply over the next few years will actually be negative 1% to 2%.
And with the cost of construction financing remaining exorbitantly high and the recent approval by the New York City Planning Commission of the special permit for all new hotel construction, supply should remain in the low single-digit range for years to come.
Earlier this year, we completed the sale of six noncore hotels that had substantial capital improvements on the horizon.
And we also took necessary steps to infuse the portfolio with nondilutive equity through our notes placement with Goldman Sachs Merchant Bank.
We believe that our unique collection of hotels and our advantaged operating strategy allow us to manage cash burn in the worst of times and drive out performance early in the recovery.
We have and continue to actively monitor the capital markets for the best opportunity to increase our operating capital without diluting shareholder valuation.
The capital markets for almost every level of financing remains extremely competitive.
And with improving fundamentals in each of our markets, we will remain opportunistic with both asset sales and financing opportunities across the next several quarters.
At current prices, we see no better value in the marketplace than our existing collection of hotels.
Second quick topic, sustainability, which has been at the core of our strategic operations since we launched our EarthView program in 2010.
Since inception, we have saved over $20 million from energy efficiency initiatives that generate recurring savings year-over-year and help to alleviate expense growth and improve margins, vital over the past 18 months as we navigated the COVID crisis.
We have also had a very positive environmental impact.
We have reduced energy use per square foot by 15% and greenhouse gas emissions by 44% since 2010.
And we announced our 2030 targets in our robust annual report on our website, disclosures that contributed to Hersha ranking #1 among our U.S. hotel peer set in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark public disclosure for the second year in a row.
We continue to be proud of the work of our teams in the field and in our headquarters, to ensure our hotels continue to operate not only efficiently, but are positioned for sustainable long-term growth.
As I mentioned earlier, the resumption of business travel is closely correlated with the return to office.
And this will present a major inflection point for our hotels, with 75% of our rooms situated in major gateway cities.
Performance at our resorts has led to significant growth this year and allowed us to generate property level cash flow quicker than most of our peers.
But our growth runway remains long with the pending rebound of business travel demand to our urban gateway markets.
With few capital expenditures on the horizon over the next few years, we can focus on hotel operations to drive high absolute RevPAR on industry-leading margins, resulting in significant EBITDA and free cash flow growth in the coming years.
And with the delta variant peaking, our borders reopening and businesses ramping up travel, we expect 2022 will be an inflection point for the lodging recovery.
So as Neil mentioned, my comments will focus on the continued growth in our margins and cash flow, and I'll close with an update on our balance sheet and outlook for the current quarter.
Top line performance from July to September continue to provide a boost to bottom line results.
During the third quarter, 31 of our 33 hotels were cash flow positive, a 21% increase versus the second quarter.
Results last quarter highlight the efficiency of our portfolio in the merits of our operating model, leading to cash flow generation in an extremely volatile environment that is still reeling from the effects of the pandemic.
These factors allowed our portfolio to generate $25.4 million in property level earnings and $4.5 million of positive corporate cash flow after all corporate expenses, debt service and the payment of dividends on all tranches of our preferred equity.
Based on month-to-date trends and forecast for the remainder of the year, we anticipate continuing to achieve positive corporate level cash flow for the fourth quarter.
The asset management initiatives we've implemented over the past 18 months, combined with our flexible operating model and continued top line improvement showed early signs that our margin expansion goal through the recovery is moving in the right direction.
As GOP margins of 45% during the third quarter were in line with the forecast we outlined on our July earnings call and approximately 100 basis points higher than our third quarter 2019 GOP margin.
On the EBITDA line, we witnessed sustained margin improvement as our comparable hotel EBITDA margin of 30% and was 360 basis points higher than the second quarter 2021 and just 230 basis points lower than third quarter of 2019.
From a profitability perspective, our resort portfolio continued to deliver meaningful EBITDA margin performance as the group ended the third quarter with a weighted average EBITDA margin of 38%, 1400 basis points higher than the third quarter 2019.
Results out west were highlighted by our Sanctuary Beach Resort in Hotel Milo as both finished the quarter with a 50% EBITDA margin.
In South Florida, the Parrot Key and Cadillac each surpassed their third quarter 2019 EBITDA margin by at least 1,800 basis points while the Annapolis Waterfront Hotel aided by a strong end to the summer, recorded a 55% EBITDA margin, the highest margin in our comparable portfolio last quarter.
Primary source of savings at our hotel has been the significant reduction in total labor.
Over the past 18 months, we've been able to run our properties on a lean staffing model with occupancies between 35% and 60% at many of our hotels.
As demand started back in the spring, we began to expand our open positions across our portfolio.
to rehire staff to support increasing occupancies.
Over the past few months, our on property and corporate level management and HR teams have been very focused on our recruiting efforts.
And over that period, we have seen a 44% rise in applicants for new posting with total hires in September, up 12% versus August following the expiration of additional unemployment benefits.
Over the last two years, we have absorbed 10% to 15% wage growth in each of our markets.
But despite this increase, our total cost per occupied room remains approximately 15% below pre-pandemic levels, with total nonmanagement contracted labor 40% below the same time in 2019.
We are encouraged by recent trends, but the hiring market, especially for hourly employees remains challenging.
Fortunately, our cluster strategy and close relationship with our third-party management company allows us to run our properties with staffing levels capable of offering our guests a service expected at our hotels, all while continuing to drive GOP and EBITDA.
As RevPAR and out-of-room revenues increasing in 2022 and beyond.
Our current operating model will yield much higher levels of absolute GOP dollars and allow us to amortize our fixed operating expenses as well as our property taxes and insurance expenses.
This provides us confidence in our ability to forecast post-pandemic EBITDA margin growth as our ability to drive ADR in tandem with applied expense savings initiatives, provides us continued confidence in our ability to generate 150 to 250 basis points of sustainable long-term margin savings for the portfolio.
For the second consecutive quarter, we saw substantial growth in food and beverage revenues at a few of our hotels.
This was led by the Envoy in Boston, which generated $3.6 million in food and beverage revenues, 80% higher than the second quarter.
The hotel's very popular Lookout Rooftop Bar was the primary driver of profit again this quarter, generating $2.4 million in revenues from beverage sales.
Meanwhile, down in Key West, revenue generated from the food and beverage outlets at our Parrot Key Resort was 48% higher than the third quarter of 2019.
We expect our recently renovated outlets at the Parrot Key will remain popular as we enter the peak season of travel to the Keys.
So just a few closing remarks on our balance sheet and outlook for the fourth quarter.
We ended the third quarter with $83.7 million in cash and cash equivalents and deposits.
In September, we successfully refinanced the $23 million mortgage loan on the St. Gregory Hotel, eliminating all debt maturities until third quarter 2022.
The interest-only loan was completed at prime plus one and matures in October of '23.
As of September 30, 78% of our debt is fixed or swapped with our total debt weighted average interest rate of 4.41% and 2.9 years life-to-maturity.
During the quarter, we spent $2.6 million on capital projects, and we continue to limit our capital expenditures strictly to maintenance and life safety renovation.
Year-to-date, we have spent $7.9 million on capital projects, and we anticipate our full year Capex load to be more than 50% below our 2020 spend.
We project very little disruption or capital spend for our portfolio across the next few years, which is materially beneficial from a cash flow perspective as the supply chain continues to tighten in conjunction with elevated construction costs, labor and oil prices.
Month-to-date in October, we continue to see incremental growth across our portfolio, but especially in our urban markets, which are running close to 10% ahead of forecast.
The largest outperformance from an occupancy perspective has been our Boston portfolio, which is currently running at a 77% occupancy month-to-date up approximately 1,800 basis points from September.
Our Manhattan portfolio occupancy is approaching 70%, 1,200 basis points higher than September.
While our Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. clusters are above 60% occupancy month to date.
From a revenue perspective, our Philadelphia and Manhattan hotels are surpassing initial forecast by 15% and 12%, respectively, while our Boston and D.C. portfolios are exceeding revenue forecast, by approximately 8% thus far in October.
Our weekday improvement post Labor Day has shown that business travelers are hitting the road, and we expect this will continue to accelerate across the next several months as more companies reopen their offices, reinstate in-person meeting some staff that is widely dispersed across the globe, resume group attendance and encourage travel to reengage with customers in order to gain market share, which will provide a strong boost to our urban-centric portfolio.
With our balance sheet rightsized to allow for accretive opportunities through the recovery and our on-property operations set to capture continued demand at our hotels.
We look forward to continued robust leisure demand at our resort properties and an inflection point in the return of meaningful and sustained business travel to drive outperformance across our portfolio for the next several years.
So this concludes my portion of the call, and we will be happy to address any questions that you may have at this time.

user
will forego providing full-year 2021 guidance at this time.

assistant