Rome, 16 October 2008. During the International Hotel Conference held this year in Rome, James Chappell, Managing Director of STR Global – worldwide leader for hotel benchmarking – pictured the 2008 performance of the sector in Europe.
“Our analysis is concentrated on above the line revenue, especially RevPAR”, explained James Chappell in his presentation, “the industry standard in determining revenue per available rooms. In Europe, this figure is -1.5% year to date, down from almost 6% in 2007, the US is also down substantially, although both Asia and the Middle East, at different points in their cycle grew strongly.”
The data collected by STR Global shows that the Middle East and African zones have grown by an overall 25.3%, followed by Asia at + 11.2%; The worst European performances have been registered by Italy at – 7.4% and Spain with a 2.2% decrease. Belgium and Germany on the other hand have done well, with + 9.4% and + 6.1%.
“Dubai leads the EMEA for 2008” specified Chappell, “followed by Moscow and then London and Paris. As for Italian cities, we have recorded a significant increase in Turin (RevPAR + 23%), while Rome has experienced a consistent down turn (- 9%).”
“Overall, the US and European hotel markets are in the correct place for the current cycle, although economic uncertainty could well make the downturn longer and harder than it would otherwise have been”, he concluded. “On a positive note, Supply growth in Europe is slower that previous years which will soften the blow, but as the market is slowing down, hoteliers will be nervously looking for a softening of corporate travel over the coming few months.”
Notes to Editors:
STR Global is the new company created by leading hospitality research companies Smith Travel Research (STR), Deloitte’s HotelBenchmark™ and The Bench. STR Global provides clients—including hotel operators, developers, financiers and analysts—access to hotel research with regular and custom reports covering over 35,000 hotels in 1,300 markets globally. STR Global provides a single source of global hotel performance data, offering concise, accurate and thorough industry research worldwide. STR Global also tracks a variety of Profitability, Pipeline and Census data covering all aspects of the industry.
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