August 2018: prosperous for Europe’s hotels

The positive results observed in August confirm the good summer performance of the European hotel industry. European hotels posted a 1.4-point increase in occupancy rates to 76.4% and average daily rates rose +3.1% to 97.5 euros. RevPAR was up +5.0% (to 76.9 euros) compared to the previous year, bringing the increase for the first 8 months of 2018 to +4.0%.

All segments saw their performance evolve in the right direction, with substantially similar results. Despite a less impressive increase than observed at the beginning of the summer, the upscale segment experienced the strongest growth (+5.5%) closely followed by the midscale segment (+5.2%) and the economy segment (+4.0%). As for the budget segment, the increase in average prices (+5.5%) continues to offset its declining occupancy rate (-1.5 points), resulting in figures that are almost identical to the previous month.

This month's champions are Latvia and Hungary, which posted RevPAR growth of +18.3 (for 92.6% occupancy) and +15.9 (for 92.5% occupancy) respectively. It should be mentioned that Latvia's hotel industry recorded a +14.7% increase in RevPAR and gained 5.7 points in its occupancy rate since the beginning of the year. Other countries have substantially similar revenues: such as Belgium (+12.9% RevPAR) and Germany (+10.1% RevPAR) with increases in their average daily rates (+6.3% and +6.5% respectively).

The leading group remains the same as in July, with France (+7.5%), Greece (+6.4%), Austria (+5.5%) and the Netherlands (+5.4%) which recorded an increase in RevPAR by more than 5%. Occupancy rate explains the increase in this RevPAR for France and Austria, while Greece and the Netherlands rely on the increase in average daily rates.

Switzerland and England illustrate a significant growth, despite average daily rates above 100 euros that do not impact occupancy. Glasgow (+11.3%) and Edinburgh (+7.2%) oust the London capital with occupancy...