Hotel occupancies fall across nation

British hotel occupancy fell almost everywhere in June compared with the same month last year, according to a report out this week.

Hotel occupancy in London fell again, said the survey from consultant PKF, but the fall was smaller than in previous months this year. The figure was down by 6.3% compared with June last year. In May, the fall was 9.7%.

Melvin Gold, managing director of hotel consultancy at PKF, said: "I didn't expect London to get a bit better. I thought that it was going to be 9% or 10% down on last year's levels right through the summer."

One reason the fall in occupancy slowed could be that hoteliers are selling their bedrooms more cheaply, he added.

The average daily bedroom rate per occupied room in London was still fractionally higher, at £125.68, compared with £125.32 last June. But the rate of increase has slowed from nearly 2% a year to 0.3%, a trend Gold expects to continue.

Outside London, where PKF's survey indicated an improvement in occupancy in each of the first five months of the year, hotels suffered their first decline. Occupancy was down by 0.9% on last June. But the regional hotels did manage to charge guests more, with an average daily room rate of £66.82, against £65.30 last year.

Gold said: "All UK hotels are now undoubtedly starting to suffer from the impact of poor summer bookings as a result of the foot-and-mouth crisis, the US economic downturn and the great British dampener - the weather."