Summer hotel rates repeat of last year
Haven’t booked your summer hotel room? Surprise. You won’t see the same cheap rates as last summer.
Instead of generous “stay two nights, get one night free” offers, hotels are offering more modest, targeted promotions, often with lots of fine print attached, advises The New York Times.
“But the good news is that hotel rates haven’t really risen from last year’s lows — at least not yet,” it adds.
“The average daily rate this summer will be almost exactly what it was last summer,” said Bjorn Hanson, associate professor at the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University. “So although the percentage discount might be less, the actual rate is still low.”
According to Smith Travel Research, which tracks hotel rates, the average daily rate in the US this summer will actually drop two percent compared with last summer, to US$95 a night.
Because that’s a national average, it’s a lot lower than what most guests pay in popular vacation destinations — but even in those cities, prices dropped a lot during the recession. In the top 25 United States markets, average hotel rates peaked at US$133 a night in 2008; the average so far this year is $116, about what it was in 2006.
Since hotels have been making less money and cutting back on services and staff. They are less likely to offer the rock-bottom discounts they rolled out during the worst of the economic crisis, when they were trying to entice anxious consumers to keep traveling.
“That means this summer’s deals feel less like a fire sale, and have more restrictions buried in the fine print,” says the Times.
By David Wilkening
David
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