SYDNEY – Sydney is marching to the beat of the Edinburgh Tattoo – and hotels in the city are delighted.
A spokesman for Accor said the most surprising “house-full†event in Sydney for a number of years has been the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, which will sell out Sydney’s hotels for up to four days straight.
This weekend, visitors to Sydney without pre-arranged hotel accommodation will struggle to find a room any closer than 50km from the Sydney Football Stadium, where the Edinburgh Military Tattoo is being staged.
The Accor hotel group, Sydney’s largest hotel operator, has reported that all of its hotels have put up the “house full†signs for three days in a row, with the group recording an occupancy rate of 96.7 percent for the week, the best performance in over two years.
Accor’s Darling Harbour hotels – Novotel, Grand Mercure, and Ibis – have gone one night better with four nights in a row of 100 percent occupancy.
“It has been phenomenal,†says Accor’s Darling Harbour general manager, Lorraine Mercuri. “There are a few small conferences going on in the precinct, but basically this has been a tartan-led tourism boom for Sydney.
“We started getting bookings mid last year when details first came out, but the scale of the demand didn’t really come onto the radar until late last year when hotels throughout Sydney had to start declining regular business because groups from NSW regional centres, interstate and even overseas started taking up sizable allotments specifically for the Tattoo.â€
See TravelMole’s Scotland special report in this newswire
