October 2021: the European hotel industry is gradually rebuilding itself

September was marked by the absence of business customers and the end of the summer season, but October has given European hoteliers a boost. The occupancy rate exceeded the 60% threshold in October and is now only -17% less than in 2019, and 1.2 points more than in September. The end of the summer holidays is thus beginning to be compensated by the resumption of business events and professional travel.

Regarding prices, while prices are tending to show a slight decrease compared to the previous month (with the exception of the UK), they are slowly approaching pre-crisis levels. In October, while Luxembourg maintained a price gap of -23.2% compared to the pre-crisis period, Austria returned to 2019 standards (-0.1%). Overall, the European hotel industry shows an average price of 96.4 euros, i.e. -10.8% compared to 2019, but 31% better than last year at the same period.

The month of October was therefore much better than last year, in particular thanks to the generalisation of vaccination throughout the continent, which enabled a gradual recovery in business travellers. The RevPAR was therefore established at 58 euros (compared to 22.1 euros last year).

In terms of range, it is still the budget and economy segments that are doing well, with occupation rates "only" -8.5 and -14.3 points lower than before the crisis. But the gap with pre-Covid performance is widening for the mid-scale and top-scale segments. The upscale segment is now only -17 points behind its pre-crisis level in terms of occupancy!

In terms of prices, hotels shows a 10.8% decrease compared to 2019, with of course a more pronounced lag in the higher ranges (-10.9% in the top range compared to -1.8% in the super-economy). But in some markets at the forefront of the recovery, such as France and the UK, upmarket & luxury...