Dec ended on 56% occupancy average after gaining 11% during the month. The ARR however ended up 5% lower than what we started on as at the 1st of December. The drop occurred when 5-20 Dec was at low occupancies and hotels reduced rate in an attempt to stimulate demand but was simply not good enough. Collective feedback is that hotels finished Dec around 15-20% lower than 2017 in revenues.

January gained 7% in occupancy between 1 and 31 Dec and starts on 37%. The ARR have increased by 12-14% during Dec for January as we see inhouse guests extending and 1-5th is carrying over the higher demand from end Dec. Jan ARR on the books is R1900 and higher than Dec at current but will certainly reduce we move further into the month.

February despite the usual strong performance, is looking bleak at 38% occ. The traditional high trade period 5-10 Feb is not looking good at all. The rate is much lower than what Jan have at R1 610.

March opens at 19% and R1 585 rate. All the forward months are at least 10-15% off LY’s pace vs what we had on the books last year this time.

One common thread carrying over from early 2018 is the last minute booking trend which is dominated by local buyers vs international. 2019 is off to a poor start from the statistics at hand.

Did you see our 2019 checklist? Read more here

Insights by Hotel Revenue Manager collects data from 16 000 rooms. Various levels of hotels all around the Cape Town metro share their info and we accurately portray the city’s forward book and demand patterns. Trading have changed the past 1-2 years and new patterns have emerged and any hotelier, owner or revenue manager needs as much info as possible, in order to pin rates at anticipated demand to get the best possible conversion. Whilst we realise some upper segment hotels might not be anywhere close to this report one should take note of overall market movement as the same will apply but at different ADR or Occ levels.

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