Commenting on the announcement, Lorna Clarke, Executive Director of HotelBenchmark™ at Deloitte said: “We are delighted to work with Lincoln University and combine our research to provide the hotel industry with even more critical information to help them understand their performance and operating environment. As we currently boast the largest independent operated survey in the region monitoring hotel performance - this is an exciting relationship and we are looking forward to developing reports to provide enhanced information in response to the changing needs of the industry”.

The HotelBenchmark™ Survey is the market leader in monitoring hotel performance tracking over 485 markets across 140 countries. The New Zealand edition of the survey currently reports on the monthly occupancy, average room rates and revenue per available room (revPAR) performance of 12 markets across the country.

Dr Anthony Brien, Senior Lecture in Hotel Management at Lincoln University added: “In addition to being committed to the hotel industry in terms of providing management education and qualifications – our research provides enormous benefits to all interested parties. Our relationship with Deloitte will provide an efficient and effective tool for hotels to benchmark their performance in a variety of ways and we will now be able to extend our research and analysis by including other variables to provide a more complete picture of the New Zealand hotel industry.”