NW hotels suffer due to snow
SNOWFALL and bad weather scuppered any chance of trading recovery for many hotels in the North West during January, new figures have shown.
Hotels in rural locations across the North West, but particularly in Cheshire and Cumbria, felt the full force of the adverse weather conditions, according to HotStats, a hotel performance benchmark database by TRI Hospitality Consulting.
Total revenues in those counties fell 13.5% and 15.3% respectively in January 2010 compared to the same month a year earlier.
This drop in revenue directly affected the profitability of hotels in Cheshire and Cumbria, with gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR) declining by 60.4% and 44.8% respectively.
Room occupancy fell sharply in both counties, down 4.6 percentage points to 48.6% in Cheshire and down 3.7 percentage points to 34.1% in Cumbria.
Hoteliers in Cumbria were also forced to offer significant discounts to those hardy souls that braved the weather and as a result average room rate dropped by 11.4%, resulting in revenue per available room (RevPAR) declining in Cumbria by 20.2%; the sharpest fall of any of the North West regions covered in the survey.
Hotels in the cities of Manchester and Liverpool, along with other larger towns were also affected albeit to a lesser extent.
Average room rates for hotels in Manchester were down 6% during January with Liverpool hotels down 5.3%.
RevPAR across the region was down by an average of 3.4% compared to January 2009, while gross operating profit per available room fell by 15.5% to £12.75 per available room, which is equivalent to just 17% of total revenue.
Charles Scudamore, director at TRI Hospitality Consulting, said: “Whilst January is almost always a challenging month for the hotel industry, the addition of poor weather for most of January had a direct impact on the performance of hotels in the North West and particularly those in rural locations.
“It is difficult, at short notice, to replace business that have either cancelled or postponed due to the weather and as such, hoteliers in the North West have struggled through what was another tough month for the industry.”
