British groups solidly positioned on their domestic markets have reasons to celebrate. Hilton , InterContinental and Millenium & Copthorne: all have just published semester results that are clearly on the rise. The pickup in business in the United Kingdom, and mainly in London, has heightened their performance. This phenomenon doesn't only concern upmarket hotels. On the budget segment, the chain Travel Inn, owned by Whitbread, also published growth in sales that was up by 6.3%. These good figures - double-digit growth in RevPAR for the month of March (+19.9%) and April (16.3%) - are however to be compared to a first semester of 2003 that was catastrophic for hotels in the British capital. “We could hardly have done worse”, confirms David Melrose, General Manager of the Holiday Inn Oxford Circus Hotel in London. Neverthe-less, the pickup has been continuous since last February. Occupancy rates are slightly better than last year (73.9% versus 71.8% over twelve months). This increase is combined with a clear increase in average daily rates over the last six months with peaks of more than 117 euros in March and in June. The result of this combined rise : hotel RevPAR went from 77.3 to 82.4 euros over a twelve-month period. According to David Michels, CEO of Hilton, if this rate continues, the Hotel division of the Hilton Group may regain pre September 11, 2001 results during the course of 2005. Even though they show a slight slowdown, during the month of August 2004, the indicators remained clearly oriented upwards with a gain of 4.8% in RevPAR.Results of the provinces are also very positive. More resistant to international crises, provincial hotels benefit from a dynamic British economy. Figures of the British regions published by Hilton (+3.4% in RevPAR) and InterContinental Hotels (+6.7%) show a rise that is...