Accor's food and drink sales plummet 25%

Food and drink sales in Accor's restaurants fell by more than 25% last year.

For the year ended 31 December 1999, the French hotel and restaurant giant recorded sales of £300.5m in its restaurants, compared with £415m in 1998.

The group had indicated earlier in the year that the decline was due to the sale of its restaurants in Spain and Brazil in 1999.

Accor's hotels in the UK also had a hard year. Occupancy dipped 4.2 percentage points to 71.1% and revenue per available room (revpar) fell by 4.3%.

It was a better year for Accor's hotels elsewhere in the world.

Sales for its entire hotels division climbed 18.1% from £1.9b in 1998 to £2.3b in 1999.

In Europe, revpar rose 3.4% in business and leisure hotels and by 7.4% in economy hotels.

Accor's sales across all its sectors, including travel agencies, car rental and casinos, increased by 8.5% from £3.4b to £3.7b.