Early Easter causes London hotel recovery to slip back
The early Easter holidays have dented the performance of London hotels during the first quarter of the year, according to preliminary figures from Andersen.
Julia Felton, director of the Andersen Hotel Industry Benchmark Survey, said: “The timing of the Easter holidays this year has caused an aberration in the pattern of the general recovery that we have been witnessing in hotel performance. In 2001 the Easter holidays fell in the second week of April whilst this year they fell in the last week of March. The Easter holidays are always a period of softer demand for hotels in London, particularly those with a high reliance on commercial business. Consequently, London hotels have experienced two weeks of relatively low demand and price sensitivity.”
However Ms Felton said she expected the figures to improve significantly next month: “We therefore anticipate that April results should show a marked improvement over March, and so continue the gradual improvement that we have been experiencing in the market.”
According to Andersen, London hoteliers faced with low demand employed different strategies during March. Hotels with average room rates over £200 refused to enter into significant price discounting and, as a result, occupancy levels fell 13.8% to 63.5% during the month.
Hotels with an average room rate below £160 adopted different tactics and sought to protect occupancy at the expense of average rate. Hotels with an average room rate below £80 and between £80-£110 reported marginal occupancy increases over 2001 levels, whilst hotels with an average room rate of between £110 and £160 reported a 0.1% decline.
March 2002 hotel performance
|
Occupancy (%) |
Average room rate |
RevPAR |
RevPAR change (%) |
|
|
Central London |
71 |
95 |
67 |
-15.0 |
|
Outer London |
63 |
65 |
41 |
-13.0 |
|
Average annual room rate |
||||
|
AARR over £200 |
61 |
243 |
149 |
-17.0 |
|
ARRR £160-£200 |
67 |
152 |
101 |
-18.8 |
|
ARRR £110-£160 |
70 |
116 |
82 |
-15.1 |
|
ARRR £80-£110 |
77 |
82 |
63 |
-12.4 |
|
ARR under £80 |
70 |
59 |
42 |
-15.3 |
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