A new study conducted by Horwath Hotel, Tourism and Leisure shows that hoteliers around the world become more pessimistic despite the growing optimism in the beginning of 2012. Prevailing global uncertainty makes hoteliers publish negative forecasts concerning their business.
The overall sentiment of hotel operators is similar to the pattern of the last three years – an optimistic outlook in the beginning of a year, negative forecasts in the middle and neutral outlook in the end.
European hoteliers are worried about instability of the region, followed by China hotel operators who are negative because of the slowing economic growth of their country. The negative sentiment is also based on results for the first of 2012 which failed to meet the expectations of hotel operators. As a rule, hoteliers are disappointed with occupancy level and average room rate performance. The study shows that hoteliers in all parts of the world except for the Americas are greatly influenced by economic uncertainty. Hotel operators in the Middle East and Africa show the highest optimism followed by Asia which also features the biggest drop in optimism among all regions. Oceania features the lowest level of optimism – strong local currency and weakening of China make domestic tourists travel abroad.
According to Horwath HTL, the situation is likely to remain unchanged until there’s the global economic crisis and geo-political uncertainty.