Because of travel restrictions last summer, this means that they did particularly well. Compared to September 2020, the occupancy and RevPAR went up by about 20% in September 2021.
- The more the travel restrictions and the higher the reluctance to go abroad, the stronger your local market will be. Look out for these.
The RevPar went from a low of €7 in November 2020 to a high of €95 in August 2021, with an average of €35. Occupancy had a low of 13% and a high of 72%, with an average of 36%.
If we reverse out ADR from these numbers (which is not exact as they were on different days, but it gives an idea) we get a low of around €54 and a high of €132.
One thing to point out at this stage is that the success was not evenly distributed amongst properties. The leisure properties at the seaside or in the countryside would have done a lot better than the ones in the city. They may be having mid-90% occupancy in the summer peak season, while the city hotels may have been in the 30-40% range.
And bearing this in mind, from a pricing point of view, I would argue that the ADRs in summer were not as high as they could have been, especially in August.
Many of the hoteliers reading this will probably agree that they filled up too early last summer, because they were caught a little unaware by the high demand. Also, there may have been a reluctance to put prices up above what they consider to be ‘fair’ prices, even though the demand was there.
- The hotels that raised their prices early did a lot better than those that waited, and I think this is the key lesson for this year.
Another interesting finding, looking at the data, is that the weekends for leisure hotels between April and October are considerably busier than the weekends. Hoteliers should look at their weekend pricing in this period and see if they can raise prices a little on these dates.
- Weekends between spring and autumn are very strong for leisure, with many hotels almost full. Consider raising prices for weekends in this period.
Channels
41% of reservations in RoomRaccon come from a single OTA. I imagine you can guess which one that was. Clue: they are also a great Dutch company.
Reliance on one channel isn’t great but also sometimes it is difficult to see any alternative. We would recommend making sure that once you get the customers once through an OTA they book next time directly. Give them a members discount and try to get them on your mailing list.
More exciting is that 15% of all reservations YTD are direct booking engines. This is something to improve on by making your website a place that people want to book. There is more on this in our RoomPriceGenie academy that is free for 3 months for RoomRaccoon clients. You can learn many other revenue-increasing tips there too.
Length of Stay
The average night per stay YTD is 2.7 nights. You can encourage longer lengths of stays by using minimum stays in higher demand periods. But do bear in mind that this reduces demand so it is best to use them for nights that are going to be full anyway, and you don’t want to charge more money. It’s a nicer way to make more revenue if you can use them to fill up nights that would have not been full otherwise (shoulder nights).
Summary
If you are not already making the most of your pricing then you will probably miss out on revenue in 2022. One great way to keep on top of everything is to use the seamless connection between RoomRaccoon and RoomPriceGenie to automate great pricing. Book a free trial here, and you can even start making money before you decide to pay.