April was incredibly successful for hotels in Edinburgh that managed to increase their profit per room by a fantastic 52.2%. This became possible because of a series of events that boosted both business and leisure travel segments.
The EICC Microbiology Society Annual Conference attracted more than a thousand visitors to the city. After that, the capital of Scotland hosted two more events the Edinburgh International Science Festival and Melrose Sevens Rugby. These two events helped hotels in Edinburgh to increase their occupancy by 6.6% to 89.2% in total. Because of these events, all segments posted growth in April. The increase of corporate and individual leisure segments reached 20.1% and 21.4% respectively. The average room rate was growing as well and added 21.6% in April 2017 to £112.70. Naturally, the increases in occupancy and room rate boosted RevPAR, the growth of which estimated 31.3%. If analyze the performance of last 12 months, the RevPAR of Edinburgh hotels is second in the country after London hotels. Total revenue per available room (TrevPAR) added 21.5%, helping the profit grow by fantastic 30.4%. The profit added £18.03 to £30.92 in total.
However, not all destinations in the UK could perform so well. Hotels in Birmingham posted the decline in profit of 24%, to the level of £31.73 per room. After a nice performance in Q1, when profit per room added 5.7% and RevPAR added 4.1%, April was a challenging month. This happened because of the extended Easter period that resulted in weaker demand. Therefore, the share of conference and corporate segments in the total demand was only 34.8%, unlike the usual share of 43.2%. The decline of leisure sector demand was 10.4%. Consequently, RevPAR fell by 14.3%, and TrevPAR fell by 14.6%.