Occupancy and revpar fall at UK hotels in December

After a positive year for hotels, business trailed off in December with declines in room occupancy and revpar.

According to a poll by Hotstats of full-service UK hotels, average room rate in December increased by 1% to £116.43 but occupancy dropped 0.8% to 70.3% and revpar was down 0.1% to £81.90.

Conference and banqueting was up 0.4% and leisure up 1.3%, but any growth was cancelled out by a 0.1% drop in food and beverage revenue to £49.44 per available room. As a result trevpar fell to £139.43.

Rising costs also meant that goppar was down 0.3% to £53 in December. Hotstats said this was equivalent to a profit conversion of 38.0% of total revenue.

In London, revpar suffered due to falling occupancy, dropping to £164.94.

Hotstats chief executive Pablo Alonso said: "December is always a tough month of trading with the interruption of the Christmas break and whilst the performance at hotels in the UK this month will be somewhat of an anti-climax, owners and operators in the UK will be pleased that losses have been minimised and it has been a pretty positive year overall.

"The London hotel market is heavily reliant on the commercial sector, which fell away, as always, towards the end of December as the Christmas holidays kicked in.

"Furthermore, the room occupancy performance in the capital has been tested in 2017 by the addition of almost 5,800 bedrooms. This is an issue which is unlikely to go away anytime soon, with a further 10,000 rooms entering the market in 2018."

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