Summer 2007: Very satisfying summer results

The bad weather did not get the better of the French hotel industry’s activity indicators. The Ile-de-France comes out as the big winner this summer (+14.3% revenue per available room for the July August period). The hotel industry in the capital benefits from the recent trends in terms of tourist behavior: on the one hand, the shortening of the summer period, which has been whittled away at by business activity which now stops later in July gets moving again earlier in August, tends to make the slow summer period disappear. On the other hand, increasing numbers of vacation goers are leaving the beaches and are attracted by tourism that is more urban, organized around a variety of events, often predominantly cultural. Another winner in the summer of 2007 is the French Riviera (+12.6%), which benefits from the dynamism of international tourism and was also able to benefit from the bad weather that hit the North. Average daily rates grew significantly during this period in which hotels were nearly full: 93.7% on average across July and August. The shoreline on the Atlantic-Channel saw a drop. Growth in its RevPAR (4.0% for the two months) may only be explained by growth in average daily rates as occupancy rates remained very stable.