[photopress:emptyhotel.jpg,full,alignright]The price of a hotel room is a moveable feast. Business hotels often dramatically reduce their rates at weekends when business people are in the bosum of their family. When there are periods of high demand they raise the prices.
It is to be hoped that the hoteliers will have learned a lesson from the Greek Olympic Games when many hotels totally priced themselves out of the market and there were many empty rooms.
There is, perhaps, already a pre-2008 Olympic Games effect for in the past year average room rates rose 13.6 percent to US$108. Although Beijing Capital International Airport reported increases of 20 percent in passenger arrivals during the first eight months of the year this was not reflected in hotel occupancy levels. They fell 4.2 percent.
The problem is manyl hoteliers will look at this blip as a non-relevant anomaly when it comes to the Olympic Games. Room rates are already on the rise.
Shenzhen, which has no serious Olympic Games connection last year woofed up its prices 12.9 percent to US$90. Partly this was the MICE effect — meetings, incentives,. conferences, exhibitions — because the city has a world-class convention and exhibition centre.
Hoteliers are working on the basis that China has the title of the fastest growing economy in Asia Pacific, with an increase of 9.9 percent in Gross Domestic Product during 2005.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 2006 promises to be another successful year, as China already achieved its fastest increases in the past decade during the second quarter of 2006 at 11.3 percent.
Thus the only way the hotel prices will go is up. Perhapsthere will come a day of reckoning when the hoteliers will cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes and cry woe is me for the customers stay away if the prices get too expensive. It happened at the Greek Olympics. That should be a warning to all hoteliers.
Source: Hospitality Net