As at 30 April 2019 the city ended on 58% occupancy which was much softer than March. Easter was a let-down with only the Fri and Sat looking strong but remainder days very weak occupancy. April had slow gains over 3 prior months and at 40% slower pace than March. The ARR also reduced by 10% in the month as we see hotels reducing rates to stimulate demand but without enough buyers it was again a kneejerk reaction to an anomaly which weren’t forecasted. More of these occurrences continues to emerge making predictions based on past data faulty. May have been moving super slow gaining only 9 occupancy points vs 15 and 20 for prior months. At the time of this report we have seen May being below LY’s performance and budgets have been amended towards achieving last year vs higher outcome expected which will clearly not materialise. Market research concluded the elections and government (with its related corporate) travel had a serious impact. Reason being that all gov and corp travel slowed down and came to a standstill before and after 6 May pending the outcome. Therefor a void of this segment was left and hotels with superior location and facilities soaked up a large majority of incoming business. June follow May’s trend and we expect very weak results. Partners reporting indicated that any and all discount sites are being utilised with very little to no results. July toward quarter 3 and 4 is looking very promising with the forward book outperforming 2018 already and we anticipate strong results based on the trend and data. Please note the insights data is collected from 16 000 available room nights. Various levels of hotels all around the CPT metro share their forward book and we can accurately portray the city’s forward book and changes in demand. We realise some upper segment hotels might not be close in numbers related to values quoted below but you should take into consideration the overall movement as the same change values will apply at ADR and Occ levels. Want to benchmark your own compset’s forward book? contact us now