A slight recovery in business travel has been identified in latest hotel booking data.
Pegasus Solutions research based on hotel booking volumes, net revenue and average daily rates (ADR) has indicated an upswing.
GDS channels, which consist predominantly of business travel bookings, saw global February bookings increases of +3.59%, a rise in net revenue of +2.96% and a rise in ADR of +0.95% over the same month last year.
North America returned a strong performance in bookings, surpassing February 2009 by +8.58%.
Other regions, while not realising the bookings boost, sustained higher length of stays (2.21 versus 2.14) than North America, and ADR that has been 15% to 21% higher than North America for the last 14 months.
Pegasus CEO Mike Kistner said: “Hotels worldwide have been holding their breath for business travel to recover. February figures are suggesting they can possibly exhale…a little.
“Regionally, the challenges hotels face in this recovery are different. North America is still contending with length of stay, which means that corporate travel is occurring, just in a lessened capacity.
“All other regions, however, have the rates and length of stay hoped for in North America but are not attracting the same volumes.”
Alternative distribution systems, comprising mainly of leisure bookings, showed positive growth in bookings, increasing +15.26% over February 2009.
This channel has been plagued by aggressive “rate shopping”, which has ADR currently running at less than 80% of 2008 and 2007 levels.
Even with booking volume up +42.73% over February 2007, these depressed rates still have global ADS revenue down -0.39% for the same period, according to the research.
*February’s The Pegasus View report is based on the three billion transactions Pegasus processed during the month for more than 95,000 hotel distribution customers worldwide. It is available online at www.pegs.com
by Phil Davies
