“We saw better results than last year for May and June. One could even say that the market has truly picked up in the last two months.” Giuseppe Vincelli, Director Business Development of Rome’s InterContinental resumes the current trend and hoteliers’ renewed optimism perfectly. The average occupancy rate is 69.5%, or 1.7 points higher than last year. Average daily rates post growth by 2.7%. These evolutions lead to growth in the RevPAR by 5.2% from one year to the next. These good results follow the months of March and April that were encouraging even if their progress could be attributed to the mediocre results in 2003, in the midst of the war on Iraq, when the consequences of the SARS epidemic in Asia had not yet been made up for. These May’s results confirm the turnaround in the trend of the previous two months before the beginning of the summer season.May’s good results, therefore, are not completely the result of renewed economic growth. They certainly also betray much effort made by hoteliers to conquer new clientele and to optimise their revenues in a still uncertain environment . Unfortunately, these efforts are not fruitful everywhere. The Netherlands still posts a slump in its monthly RevPAR (-1.8%), but in light of the indicators read in recent months (the cumulated RevPAR on 12 months is down 9.5%), this drop is relatively limited. The outcome is less encouraging for Spain, which posts a RevPAR down 11.2% in May. Occupancy rates and average daily rates show a clear drop (–3.2 points and –7% respectively). It may be hoped that the summer season that is beginning will allow Iberian hoteliers to regain the roads to growth.Results by category indicate that all segments held up well. 2*hotels posted a solid progress in the RevPAR by playing on...