While July was rather a disappointing month for French hoteliers, in August they managed to boost their sales. Thanks to good weather and beneficial calendar, hotels in both Paris and provincial cities improved their results. This particularly concerns Cote d’Azur hotels.
Even though not all segments performed well in August (super budget and budget hotels posted flat results), vast majority of hotels improved their results, with luxury and upscale segments taking the lead. Raise in revenues was reached thanks to increased average daily rate and occupancy. In some segments, such as upscale and luxury, the growth estimated 10%. “Bank holidays” is one of the reasons for that. In 2013, new business year started rather early - on the 15th August. Therefore, in addition to traditional summer visitors, France was visited by travellers from this group, who surely improved results of the higher end of the market. This August, many destinations offered special event programmes that certainly drew attention of many travellers. For example, hotels in Nantes served more visitors from the coast thanks to promotion of Nantes football team to the first legion and International Federal Bicycle Touring Week.
Hotels in Cote d’Azur, naturally, posted the biggest growth. The region traditionally benefits the most from the highest spending clients from the Middle East who rest there during Ramadan, but in 2012 they were quite rare. The same applied to the beginning of 2013, but August was rather a busy month. In certain segments, hotel room rates were up +25-27%. Finally, hotels on the Atlantic Coast also had a good month, even though their results certainly lag behind ones of the Riviera. Here hotels in Nord-Pas-de-Calais (Normandy), Pays-de-la-Loire (Brittany), and Charente-Aquitaine reached best results.