28 Feb 2013
Sluggish start to 2013 for UK hotels
BY Jessica Tasman-Jones
Poor weather and the timing of the New Year bank holiday have contributed to a sluggish January for the UK’s hotels.
Preliminary figures reveal room yields in London fell by 5.6 per cent to £76.31, compared with £80.87 in January 2012. Occupancy also dropped from 72.0 per cent to 67.8 per cent.
In this period room rates only rose £112.27 to £112.49.
Outside the capital a 1.7 per cent drop in occupancy from 57.1 per cent to 56.2 per cent just outweighed a 1.7 per cent increase in room rate from £52.44 to £53.33.
Room yields declined only slightly from £29.99 a year ago to £29.96.
Partner for Hotel Consultancy Services at PKF, Robert Barnard, said: “The poor weather that much of the country experienced in January appears to have hit occupancy, and there’s very little that operators can do in the circumstances.
“The timing of the New Year bank holiday didn’t help either, and effectively meant that the corporate market didn’t restart until the second week of January.”
Barnard said January is traditionally a quiet month but warned the economy is likely to remain fragile for the foreseeable future.
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