Hope is in the air for the United Kingdom hotel industry.
Hotels in England and Wales are scheduled to fully reopen on May 17, with those in Northern Ireland following a week later. Hotels in Scotland reopened on April 26.
U.K. hoteliers have long awaited the reopening dates these last few months in lockdown. Currently, hotels can only conduct business with guests traveling for necessary reasons, in quarantine or because they are essential workers.
Performance in the U.K. across March was muted, said Thomas Emanuel, director at STR, CoStar’s hospitality analytics firm.
“To be candid, there has been very little movement,” he said.
Occupancy now retains the same pattern it has since the beginning of the year, with weekday peaks of approximately 40% and weekend troughs of approximately 20%, Emanuel said.
“Average daily rate continues to be firmly in negative territory. You will notice, however, that the level of decline looks to be its lowest for many months. Realistically, however, this is because we are more than a year into the pandemic,” he said.
As for revenue per available room, that same mathematics applied to the first week of the second year of the pandemic, where RevPAR seemingly — but not really — achieved noticeable year-over-year growth.
But the performance data for the next two weeks — starting April 5 — showed that “we are very much in the same place that we were in 2020. The longevity of COVID-19 is highly visible and highly sobering [in such data],” Emanuel said.
Great Reopening
With the vaccination rollout in high gear in the U.K., there is real hope of a strong late spring and summer for the hospitality industry.
Forward-looking bookings data through April 19 across Europe clearly presented the U.K. in the best light, Emanuel said.
Occupancy on the books for the next 90 days as of April 17 showed a disparity between London and regional U.K. markets, he said.
“The capital’s business on the books remains a little weaker, at present peaking in at the 20% mark," Emanuel said. "When comparing this to regional U.K., we can clearly see the premium when looking toward the warmer months. Business on the books is already at 35% for the last week of June.”
“It is nice to report some positive trends,” he added.
For more of Emanuel’s insights into U.K. performance data, please watch the video above.