The Bench Helps Brussels’ Hotels Shake Off The Weekend Blues
The latest market information from The Bench, the sole provider of daily performance data to the hotel sector, shows that Brussels hotels have enjoyed an impressive 2007 so far, but that weekends remain the city’s Achilles heel.
Hotel RevPAR in the Belgium capital leapt ahead by 10.0% to €70.82 in the eight months to the end of August 2007. The engine of success was average rate, up 8.3% to €106.79; in comparison, occupancy managed only a 1.5% rise to 66.3%.
The Bench’s figures, which provide hotel clients with a daily, mid-week, weekend, weekly and monthly analysis of their performance against the market or competitor set, show that while Brussels’ midweek RevPAR stood at €91.10, a gain of 10.3%, at weekends it was just €43.24, up 9.0%.
The key to this marked difference is the city’s position as the de facto capital of the European Union. It houses two of the EU’s main institutions – the European Commission and the Council of the European Union – and a branch of the European Parliament. Together they employ 30,000 people. On top of this Brussels is the political headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and home to 1,400 international organisations, 10,000 lobbyists, 1,000 journalists and more ambassadors than Washington DC.
With such a critical mass of influence and institutions in one place, a full calendar of meetings and conferences join the throng of business travellers who arrive in the city during the working week needing accommodation.
These business travellers check out on Friday, leaving the hotels to rely at weekends on lower-yielding leisure travellers. The absolute difference in RevPAR is as high as €58.17, between top-performer Tuesday and back-market Saturday. Occupancy on Tuesday is 78.7% compared to 59.3% on Saturday, while average rate hits a Tuesday high of €126.97 against just €70.29 four days later.
As long as this dichotomy continues, hotel occupancy in Brussels will remain constrained. Brussels cannot compete with Paris or Amsterdam as a city-break destination, but it is doing its best to attract more weekend visitors. For example, to celebrate this year’s 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which got the European Union under way, an exhibition of the work of Leonardo da Vinci has taken up a seven-month residency in the Belgium capital.
Brussels weekend blues won’t be solved overnight, but users of The Bench’s online, real-time performance data have the ideal revenue management tool to handle these demand fluctuations.