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Posted Mar 8, 2010
Posted Feb 20, 2010
Posted Feb 16, 2010
I'm heartened to see some evidence that the meetings business is picking up among some hoteliers, yet there's still some time for aggressive sourcing for bargains. Starwood Hotels & Resorts earlier this month said that it is seeing higher weekday occupancies and revenue per available room -- partly due to more business bookings and "pent-up" demand for meetings and conventions bookings, according to a story in The Beat.
Posted Jan 13, 2010
Choice Hotels International has yet to see a pick up in corporate bookings demand, and expects corporate negotiated rates to remain flat in 2010, according to CFO David White, speaking during an investor conference call last week.
Posted Nov 11, 2009
The American Hotel & Lodging Association during the past few days produced interesting dialogue providing some insight into where the lodging industry is heading. Hotels are bracing for a tough 2010 that will see further rate declines; luxury properties will be the first to come back; business travel will remain weak; and hotels will continue to charge ancillary fees for amenities like high-speed Internet, according to comments made at AH&LA's fall conference here in New York.
Posted Sept 11, 2009
Recent demand commentary offers no consensus on whether business travel cuts are permanent. The now-familiar sentiment that traffic numbers at least aren't getting any worse seems about right, but the summer is now over. Airlines in the coming weeks should start to get a better handle on corporate demand and discussions during the next round of airline earnings conference calls in five or six weeks could be telling.
Posted Sept 2, 2009
OK - so how about a little good news for a change. I finally got to see the numbers for July from ARC. There is clearly a trend here. Even accounting for the aberrations in Feb and the changes in Easter - we can see that since March the transaction numbers have clearly changed for the better. July's numbers show only .77 percent Y/Y down. August which should be out in the next week will be interesting. I would actually expect that we will see a definitive improvement in September as this was the month when sales first started to dive last year.
Posted Aug 20, 2009
You can either read this post as some more gloom and doom news for our industry, or you can see the following information as yet more proof of how much buying opportunity will continue to present itself for your company's meetings and events.
Earlier this month, at Smith Travel Research's first-ever Hotel Data Conference, more than half of attendees polled predicted that revenue per available room at hotels won't start going back into positive territory again until the latter half of 2010 or beyond. Further, more than one-third think it'll take even longer -- until 2011 or beyond. And what about rates? Of the 88 attendees polled, a little more than one-third think recovery will come in 2011 or beyond, while about 30% say rates will climb again in fourth-quarter 2010. Another 16% see third-quarter 2010 as the more likely scenario.
Posted Jul 16, 2009
The results are now flooding in. A clear picture is emerging. The traffic is off. The yield is way down. the number is best expressed by AMR's recent results. Traffic off by 8+ percent and total revenues down 20 percent. However, judging by the last few flights I have been on you wouldn't think so. This also seems to be reflected by the airports numbers. So the travel is stabilizing. But as my recent poll shows, we are not going to see the rebound until 2010 at least.
Posted Jun 5, 2009
This week the U.S. domestic carriers have been in the throes of the usual first-week-of-the-month traffic and RASM reporting ritual.
And what have we found out from the various press releases full of mind-numbing numbers?
I think Gary Chase, analyst with Barclays started the week off on the right tone as he wrote, "We think the market was largely ready for numbers as bad as CAL posted last night, even if we had hoped for better."
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