Leisure customers help offset commercial slowdown for UK hotels
Strong demand from leisure customers helped UK hotels maintain profit growth despite a weakening commercial segment during August 2017.
That's according to the latest figures from hospitality intelligence firm Hotstats.
It found that demand from the leisure segment in August 2017 accounted for 36.6% of the total, compared to 30.3% for the 12 months to August 2017.
As the summer holidays began in earnest, strong demand levels enabled hotels to achieve a 3.1% increase in average room rate, to £112.89. That was more than enough to offset the 0.6 percentage point decline in room occupancy to 82.1%.
Meanwhile, revpar increased by 2.3% year on year to £92.64, which was markedly higher than the year-to-date average of £88.54.
In addition to the growth in rooms revenue, there was a 0.8% year-on-year rise in food and beverage revenue in August 2017, on a per available room basis.
In spite of a 0.3 percentage point increase in payroll to 28.4% of total revenue, hotels in the UK recorded a 1.1% increase in GOPPAR to £50.33.
Commenting on the findings, HotStats CEO Pablo Alonso said: "In addition to a revival in the appetite for staycations, which has been somewhat forced by the crash in the value of sterling after Brexit, hard work from Visit Britain means the Destination UK tourism proposition is stronger than ever, fuelling visitor demand from overseas.
"Furthermore, the ability of hoteliers to effectively manage demand has helped to offset the effect of the summertime decline in the stalwart commercial sector.
"Those factors, among others, have helped to ensure that the days when August was a month best forgotten by hotel owners and operators in the UK are long gone."
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