October 4th - Hotel rates are up on pre-pandemic levels
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 4 October 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I've been at the Annual Hotel Conference in Manchester, which from a travel point of view is more exciting than the Conservative conference in Birmingham. My takeaways: hotel rates are well up on pre-pandemic levels and could stay high; properties are still in the 20th (or even 19th) century, requiring guests to line up at reception to check in; and "the last place I would be thinking of going for Christmas shopping is New York".
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Independent Travel Podcast. |
| 0:06.0 | Oh my goodness, is it Tuesday already with me, Simon Cawber, and I'm just leaving a conference. |
| 0:14.0 | This is the annual hotel conference which is being held in Manchester at the very impressive convention conference |
| 0:24.5 | centre here and I've been talking to oh dozens of people but that's what these things are good |
| 0:31.9 | for find out what is going on so I thought I should tell you what is going on in terms of a hotel industry, |
| 0:40.3 | which is under immense strain. Of course, everybody had a pretty terrible last two and a half years. |
| 0:48.3 | But now the story is that there is a rate-led recovery. |
| 0:56.0 | What does that mean? |
| 0:58.0 | It means you will be paying a small fortune for your hotel. |
| 1:04.0 | Basically, people are, thank goodness, traveling again, which is very good news, I think, for everybody, for us, the travellers, of course, but also for the excellent people who work in hotels. |
| 1:19.0 | But the rates that you are paying are going to be more than you were paying before. |
| 1:25.7 | And effectively, hotel rooms in the UK currently 75. more than you were paying before and effectively |
| 1:27.7 | hotel rooms in the UK |
| 1:29.6 | currently 75% occupancy |
| 1:33.4 | which is pretty strong |
| 1:34.7 | but the prices are |
| 1:36.5 | as you may have found |
| 1:37.8 | a lot higher than that |
| 1:40.6 | so I've been asking |
| 1:41.9 | well hang on |
| 1:42.5 | if you're 75% full surely you want to go for |
| 1:47.2 | 100% fall, so therefore you'll cut your rates a bit and then your next door neighbour will do |
... |
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