Hoteliers are questioning the five-star hotel data in the December STR Global report on hotel performance and say the data does not reflect the reality of the situation.
The report puts the average room rate for five-star properties in Cape Town over December at R2 159, while the average five-star room rate January to December 2009 was R1 808.
Clifford Ross, City Lodge Hotels ce, says the Cape Town figure does not correspond to what City Lodge Hotels knows was being charged in the city in December, considering that a number of new five-star hotels recently opened. “Rooms were practically being given away. Just look at the specials columns.
“For the report to reflect an increase in occupancy in December and only a single-digit decrease in average room rate, does not gel. The same goes for four-star hotels, which showed an increase in occupancy and in average room rate achieved in December.” He added that either the R2 159 figure was incorrect, or the occupancy figures were distorted or both, because for the whole of last year, the report showed double-digit percentage declines in occupancy when compared with 2008, except in December. “Could the final draw for the 2010 Fifa World Cup on December 4 have had such a marked effect on these stats?
“I don’t believe December 2009 would have been better than December 2008 when the global economic recession had just started and the rand/dollar exchange rate was more in favour of the international tourist.”
Brett Dungan, Fedhasa’s ceo, agrees that something is amiss with the figures in the report. “The stats should be right as they come from all the hoteliers, so unless they calculated the stats incorrectly, it means the info coming from the hoteliers isn’t 100% truthful. I don’t think the five days at the beginning of December would have made that much difference to occupancies, so if anything, they should have been the same, not up.”
STR Global’s UK-based director of marketing, Konstanze Auernheimer, told Tourism Update that the Greater Cape Town five-star figures that were reported were based on a consistent sample of 11 hotels for which STR Global has collected performance data for the past two years. “I am not surprised that the perception in the market place is different as new supply in a market can add pressure on rates and occupancies for the existing supply.”
Auernheimer added that the specific report requested by Tourism Update on the five-star market was from the HotelBenchmark team days, which run on a consistent sample. “Our current reports don’t report on five stars but on classes like luxury, upper scale and the like and these do include new hotel openings.”
Dungan stressed the importance of the statistics provided by companies like STR Global.
“People in the industry use those statistics to make decisions.”