Asia Pacific

Analysis by Kelsey Fenerty

Note: All figures reported in local currency

Taylor Swift kicked off the second international leg of her wildly successful Eras Tour in early February, and Asia Pacific hoteliers were, in fact, “ready for it”. The seventeen-night leg gave a much-needed performance boost to Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore hotels.

The Americas | Asia Pacific | Europe | Middle East

In this global update, we take a journey through each of the four world regions – focusing on performance, pipeline, and factors that influenced the data in 2023, while also looking ahead to what’s in store for the rest of 2024.

Analysis by Jesper Palmqvist, Senior Director – Asia Pacific

There is plenty of time remaining in 2023, but Singapore’s hotel bookings are already increasing rapidly for 2024 with the market set to host several major events early in the year. Utilizing Forward STAR data, we took a quick look at the specific impact for Singapore’s hotels from Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour”, Coldplay and the global Rotary Convention.

These summaries include the following: 

After the outbreak of the epidemic in Guangdong at the end of May, the occupancy rates of the two major cities in Guangdong—Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other parts of the province—have fallen to the bottom. As the center of this epidemic, Guangzhou hotels have been more severely affected. With the implementation of anti-epidemic measures and accelerated vaccination, the Guangzhou epidemic has gradually improved in mid-June.

Tianjin, as an important regional hub and international port of the country, is the gateway to the opening up of the northern region. Since the beginning of 2021, as the epidemic prevention and control gradually stabilized, Tianjin hotel market performance rebounded significantly with occupancy rate and average room rate showing positive performance.

Beijing, Tianjin & Hebei Markets

Entering 2021, the occupancy rate of the entire Mainland China hotel market has recovered significantly as far back as mid-March. As a key business travel and seaside leisure resort market in the northern region, the pace of demand recovery in Qingdao’s hotel market basically keeps pace with the average value of Mainland China.

As Thailand battles a third wave of COVID-19, most markets were stuck at single-digit hotel occupancy over the final days of April, except for Pattaya and Bangkok.

Before that, areas such as Huahin/Cha Am and Pattaya, which are known as drive-to markets from Bangkok, showed expected and notable spikes on Saturdays ahead of Songkran.

Compared with its initial lockdown of 2020, Singapore continues to operate with lessened pandemic restrictions: face masks, F&B limitations, tracing, and little travel. There is hope the country will open further in Q3, as 25% of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. Continued, heavy financial support, particularly toward the travel and tourism sector, also adds optimism for an improved Q3.

One of Thailand’s most important celebrations each year, Songkran provided a modest impact on hotel performance during the festive period in 2021.