SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Market Metrix, LLC, the leading provider of customer and employee feedback and performance tools for the hospitality industry, today announced results of the Market Metrix Hospitality Index(TM) (MMHI) for the first quarter of 2007. While hotel guest satisfaction climbed to near record levels, airline passenger satisfaction tumbled to its lowest level in years. Rental car scores were stable.
Luxury badges don’t mean a thing to Gen Y. Their appetite for the next best thing is voracious. Unlike, baby boomers who could cozy up to a luxury brand, Gen Yers don’t want to stay on the same topic. Technology allows them to hunt and gather information making them less likely to stay true to a name—unless the product behind the name captivates them. However, in the long run, short-lived product cycles will burnout the luxury consumer. For luxury innovators, that means creating a product that a consumer can build on and not discard. A luxury item should have longevity. Luxury is evolving. No longer are we talking about the kind of luxury that breeds keeping up with the Joneses, a notion first borne out of trade and fueled by the industrial age. The next generation is quickly leaving that “me too” notion behind.
In France, 2006 closed with the strongest annual growth in the RevPAR since 2000. Quarter after quarter, progress was increasingly strong. The first quarter 2007 followed this trend. Progress in the rate of change for the RevPAR stays at levels of around 10%. This performance is higher than that reached on the level of the European Union (+9.1% in the first quarter) and places France on a par with the major European countries (+11.2% in the United Kingdom, +9.4% in Germany) and ahead of Spain (+5.2%) and Italy (-7.5%).
Washington, D.C. | Renewed enthusiasm for travel among consumers and no major obstacles on the horizon mean the U.S. travel industry will enjoy a good summer travel season in 2007, with leisure travel increasing 1.4% over last summer, according to the latest forecast from the Travel Industry Association (TIA). Americans will take nearly 330 million person-trips in June, July and August 2007, a record high number. A person-trip is one person traveling 50+ miles, one-way, away from home. Business and convention travel will remain strong as well, increasing about 3 percent this summer.
Smith Travel Research (STR) is the recognized leader in providing accurate, actionable information and analysis to the lodging industry. Since 1985, the company has served the industry operating on the key principals of integrity, confidentiality and customer service. STR provides timely information and analysis to all major North American hotel chains and a growing number of chains in Europe and Asia. Individual hotels, management companies, appraisers, consultants, lenders and other lodging industry analysts also rely on STR data for the accuracy they require.
Travelodge Gets Prestbury Juices Flowing Again | Travelodge, the budget hotel chain, has struck a sale and leaseback deal worth £128 million. Property group Prestbury has acquired 17 UK hotels that Travelodge will take on leases of between 25 and 35 years’ duration. Travelodge will use £100 million of the money raised to repay debt and will invest the remainder in its business. This is the second time in three years that Prestbury has come knocking on Travelodge’s door. In 2004 the company paid £400 million for 135 Travelodge hotels in a similar deal.
Total U.S. room occupancy in the first three months of 2007 was 59.5 percent, nearly 1 percent below the same period last year although still the third highest for the quarter in the past ten years. The number of rooms sold increased only .3 percent from a year ago while supply rose more than 1 percent. Revenue per available room increased over 5 percent due entirely to the higher average room rate. Business travel held up fairly well during the quarter but leisure travel was down significantly. This can be attributed to several factors including the continued high cost of gasoline; the depressed housing market and a general lack of consumer confidence in the economy.
Chain hotels in the UK have delivered a robust sales performance in the first quarter of 2007 with London showing particular strength. Room revenue per available room in the capital was up 11.9 per cent in the first three months of 2007, thanks almost entirely to an improvement in room rate. Rates were up 11.4 per cent to £105.56 while occupancy was only marginally ahead by 0.4 percentage points to 77.9 per cent.
Vector On Course To Buy Malmaison And Hotel du Vin | Marylebone Warwick Balfour (MWB) has made a proposal to sell for £495.1 million the nine Malmaison and eight Hotel du Vin properties in the UK (a combined total of 1,363 rooms). The proposed deal includes the total of seven properties under development. MWB will continue to manage all of the hotels. The betrothed is Vector Hospitality, which is the UK’s first specialist hospitality REIT (real estate investment trust). Overseeing the nuptials is Richard Balfour-Lynn, the chief executive of MWB and leader of the Alternative Hotel Group, which has founded Vector in partnership with Bank of Scotland Corporate and Royal Bank of Scotland. The REIT, which intends to float on the London market next month, has on its board Sir David Michels, the former chief executive of Hilton Group.
2007 looks set to be a five-star year for the UK hotel industry with revPAR growth (revenue per available room) of 8.8% in the first three months of the year and double–digit increases in a number of UK cities. The results come on the back of three years of consecutive growth across the hotel industry and Deloitte’s findings show the average hotel room now costs £6 more than at the same time last year.
IPSWICH, Mass., The Customer Respect Group, an international research and consulting firm that focuses on how corporations treat their online customers, today released findings from its First Quarter 2006 Online Customer Respect Study of the Airline & Travel Industry.
London The First To Accept Global Hyatt's Andaz Challenge | Andaz – the Hindustani word for “personal style” – is the newest brand in the world of Global Hyatt Corporation (GHC). The first property to wear the luxury brand will be the Great Eastern Hotel in London, which GHC and JER Partners purchased last year. The 267-room hotel at Liverpool Street railway station will take its new name when renovation work ends this September. GHC’s recently acquired hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York is likely to be the next Andaz hotel; the company is also considering flying the new flag in cities including Moscow and Beijing.
Moscow hotels enjoyed the strongest growth in sales during the first two months of this year, as measured by revenue per available room. Hotels included in the sample in the Russian capital showed revpar growth of 23.0 per cent during the first two months of 2007 compared to the same months in 2006. This put the city ahead of all nine others in the survey with the next best performer, Paris, showing 15.0 per cent growth.
Hitwise monitors a range of Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks to capture the usage patterns of Internet users. The ISPs represent a diverse range of metropolitan and regional areas including Internet access from home, work and educational institutions. Each day, Hitwise extracts from its partner ISP networks a list of websites visited and ranks them according to a range of industry standard metrics - including 'Visits', 'Pages' and 'Average Session Duration'. Hitwise also extracts Clickstream data which analyzes the movements of visitors between sites. Hitwise abides by local and international privacy legislation and analyzes all data in aggregate form. The Hitwise methodology is audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers on a quarterly basis. To view the Hitwise privacy policy and methodology in full please visit .
NEW YORK, Based on the cost of providing hotel products and services compared to the amounts paid by the guests, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that in the past decade, value received by customers has averaged approximately 86 percent at full-service hotels and 72 percent at limited-service hotels.
Sao Paolo, Brazil - Latin America Travel & Tourism is expected to generate US$186.4bn of economic activity, growing to US$304.3bn by 2017 according to the World Travel & Tourism Council's (WTTC) 2007 Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) research, sponsored by Accenture and prepared by Oxford Economics.
Rezidor Flying In Ireland | Dublin Airport Authority last year sold the hotels that constituted the Great Southern portfolio in the Republic of Ireland. Three of the eight properties were at the airports of Dublin, Shannon and Cork and were acquired by CG Hotels. That company has now appointed Rezidor Hotel Group to manage each of the three hotels, which on 2 April will be renamed the Radisson SAS Hotel, Dublin Airport, the Radisson SAS Hotel, Cork Airport, and the Park Inn Shannon Airport. The properties, which have a total of 425 rooms, are Rezidor’s first airport hotels in the Republic of Ireland. HVS Hodges Ward Elliott acted for CG Hotels in securing Rezidor as the operator.
The Canadian Weekly Lodging Outlook is a joint publication of Smith Travel Research and HVS International, Vancouver and Toronto, Canada.Permission to republish any article in The Canadian Weekly Lodging Outlook is granted, provided that credit and notification are given to HVS International. Hospitality Valuation Services, HVS and HVS logo are registered service marks.
Travelodge Warms Up For The 2012 Olympics | If there were an Olympic event known as putting the most hotel rooms into London, then Travelodge, the budget hotel chain, would be a firm favourite to take gold. The company will give it its best shot; Travelodge is to invest £140 million in the construction of 20 new hotels (3,500 rooms) in London that will be open in time for the city's staging of the Olympics in 2012. By the end of this marathon piece of development work Travelodge should have 7,000 rooms in the capital: easily enough to send it with a hop, skip and a jump to the highest plinth on the medal rostrum.
The UK hotel sector is set for two more good years ahead with room rates in luxury London hotels approaching £360 a night by 2008, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP ‘Hospitality Directions Europe - UK Hotel forecast’ released today.