Thistle edges ahead
05 March 2001
Despite a slow start to the year, Thistle Hotels boosted turnover on its retained hotels by 8% to £324.4m in the 53 weeks to 31 December 2000. Revenue per available room (revpar) climbed by 6% to £53.45m and pre-tax profits edged up by 0.7% to £68.2m, although this was partly due to the adoption of a new accounting standard which reduced profits by £1.8m. "Progress in 2000 was encouraging with a particularly good performance in the second half when turnover and revpar increased by 11.9% and 7.3% respectively compared with 1999," said chairman David Newbiggin. "In the first eight weeks of the current financial year, revpar and turnover are ahead by over 10% on the comparative period last year in both London and the regions," added chief executive Ian Burke. "This is encouraging, although the somewhat uncertain general economic outlook worldwide may have some effect on the UK hotel market." Thistle ended the year with 56 hotels and 10,739 bedrooms, with London accounting for 23 hotels and 6,331 rooms. It sold three small regional hotels, the Black Bull in Glasgow, the Wellesley hotel in Leeds and Aberdeen's Dee Motel . Its London hotels boosted revpar by 9.4% to £65.08 against a London average of 6%. Occupancy grew by 2.5% to 81.3%, average room rate by 6.7% to £80.05, and turnover by 9.6% to £211m. Thistle said an increase in the number of hotels in cities such as Cardiff and Glasgow contributed to a 0.6% decline in occupancy to 67.8% and a 0.5% fall in revpar to £36.56 in regional hotels. Average room rate moved up marginally by 0.1% to £53.92 and turnover increased by 5.2% to £113.4m. Opening more branded restaurants and leisure clubs and improving banqueting and conference facilities in regional hotels helped boosted non-room sales by 5%. New one-off restaurants included Christopher's, the joint venture with Christopher Gilmour at the Thistle Victoria, London, and wwwater.café at the Thistle Tower, also in London. The company upgraded 1,824 bedrooms in 2000, so 82% of rooms have now been refurbished to the four-star Thistle standard. Internet bookings grew four-fold at the start of 2001 to £66,000 a week on average.
