Bucharest Hotels ’08 Occupancy Rate Dn 19.6% To 57% – Deloitte

While the hotel offer in Romania’s capital city significantly rose last year, with the opening of Ramada Plaza, Radisson SAS and the RIN Grand Hotel extension, revenues per available room (revPAR) dropped 12.7% to EUR76.

“Figures published four months ago showed that Bucharest had experienced the second largest occupancy decline in Europe (-14.2% to 61.2%). The most recent report indicates a more pronounced fall, as the global economic meltdown accelerated, taking a toll on the leisure and business travel sectors especially in the final quarter of 2008,” Deloitte Romania Chairman George Mucibabici said in a press release.

Mucibabici added that the tourism industry would focus on survival strategies this year, due to the negative perspectives of the sector, adding that although the decrease room prices seems tempting, it is not a long-term solution.

Deloitte says that, according to the World Tourism Organization, in the first half of 2008, international tourist arrivals rose 5%, then fell 1% in the second half of the year, resulting in a total annual growth of 2%.

“Despite growth being slower than the 7% achieved in 2007, an extra 16 million people travelled around the world and a new record was set of 924 million worldwide tourist arrivals,” according to the report.

Hotel performance across Europe slowed as the economic crises worsened and ended the year in negative territory, with revPAR down 5.1% to EUR70.