Hotels blame early Easter for poor March occupancy

Two major hotel surveys published this week revealed a poor performance by the UK's hotels in March. Both agreed that the early Easter was to blame.

The surveys, from consultants PKF and Andersen, both indicated a drop in revenue per available bedroom (revpar) of nearly 17% in London, which was the worst-hit part of the country.

Occupancies in London fell by 4% to 74.5%, according to the PKF figures, with Andersen reporting occupancy figures of 76% for central London and 65% in outer London.

The Andersen survey concerned itself solely with the capital, but the PKF survey, which is nationwide, found that declines elsewhere were less sharp.

Its figures suggested that occupancy in the regions was 66.7%, a 2.7% fall on March 2001, with average room rates down 4.3% to £60.27. Revpar was £40.81, down by 6.9% from the £43.84 achieved in the same period last year.

The reason that Easter had a bad effect on the hotels included in the surveys was that they are mainly made up of hotels which rely primarily on business travellers, so holiday periods which are good for leisure hotels are correspondingly a weaker time for them.

Melvin Gold, managing director of PKF's hotel consultancy, added that the influence of holidays on monthly figures was likely to continue for the next couple of months because of fewer bank holidays in May and more in June.

"It's going to be very complicated for the next few months, but we are hoping that April should reverse the trend we recorded last month," he said.

Julia Felton, director of the Andersen survey, agreed. She added: "The Easter holidays are always a period of softer demand for hotels in London, particularly those with a high reliance on commercial business."

Also released this week were figures from the British Incoming Tour Operators Association, which indicated that the decline in visitors to Britain for March was the smallest annual decline since February 2001.

by David Harris and Samantha McClary