April 2022: an air of revenge travel over the European hotel industry

With a more favourable health context, sanitary restrictions behind and a desire to travel again, the European hotel industry posted a RevPAR of only -10.5% in April, whereas the gap was still -22.7% last month (relative to March 2019). While the ADR is being higher than 2019-levels on a European scale (+3.3%), the occupancy rate (although 9.8 points below 2019 levels) is also on a catch-up dynamic.

With the exception of Poland and Hungary, which had reached positive activity levels last month due to the impact of the Ukrainian crisis, relative to the previous month (March 2022 vs. March 2019), all countries have seen their activity gap tightening in April 2022 relative to April 2019.

And the summer season is almost there: Spain is exceeding its pre-COVID levels. Indeed, the country is posting a RevPAR this month at +4.9% relative to April 2019 thanks to an average daily rate that has increased by 11.8% and a rate of occupancy only -4.6 points from its norms. Portugal is also showing a great recovery (with a +8.8% increase in its ADR and occupancy at only -8.5 points) while Greece and Italy show a -7.0% and -11.5% of their RevPAR level. The start of the season does indeed generally tend to start later.

But France and the UK are also performing very well with a recovery in their activity: only -2.2% and -0.2% difference with the 2019 level. With international customers coming back and the spring holidays, both countries can look forward to a good summer.

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On the contrary, although the situation is improving compared to last month, Germany and the Benelux countries are still significantly behind in their performance: hotel activity is still fluctuating between -27.0% and -20.3% compared to 2019. This delay...