Hong Kong Hotel Rooms Are 25% Cheaper As Protests Cool Tourism
Hong Kong Hotel Rooms Are 25% Cheaper As Protests Cool Tourism
(Bloomberg) -- The Hong Kong protests are crushing hotel demand, pushing room rates down.
The average daily rate for a room was HK$1,079 ($137.68) in September, 25% lower than a year ago, according to lodging data provider STR.
The good news for travelers was bad for hospitality companies. Hyatt Hotels Corp. saw revenue per available room, or RevPar, plummet more than 50% in Hong Kong this month, Chief Executive Officer Mark Hoplamazian said Thursday during a conference call. That follows a roughly 36% decrease during the three months ended in September.
Hyatt opened its first hotel in Hong Kong 50 years ago. Soft results in the city, where the tourism industry depends heavily on visitors from mainland China, drove a decrease in RevPar, a key industry metric, for the company’s full-service hotels across Asia.
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. is having similar issues, with Hong Kong RevPar falling 40% in the third quarter, CEO Christopher Nassetta said last week on a conference call.
Hong Kong’s economy plunged into a recession during the period as ongoing protests and heightened tensions with the mainland drove a 3.2% retreat in gross domestic product. Tourism has been hit especially hard.
Across the Hong Kong hotel industry, RevPar was down 44% in September and 13% through the first nine months of the year, according STR.
To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Clark in New York at pclark55@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Giammona at cgiammona@bloomberg.net, Peter Eichenbaum
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