London hotels reported a slight increase in gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR) in the month of November, but the UK provinces continued to show much more positive year-on-year movements, with Eastern hoteliers recording a 27.7 percent surge in gross operating profit, according to the latest data from HotStats.
Hotels in the east of the country achieved a combined uplift in occupancy of 3.4 percent and in average room rate (ARR) of 7.3 percent that resulted in an impressive increase of 12.5 percent in RevPAR to $78.20.
Payroll management further enhanced this increase in revenue performance. Although overheads per available room rose by 3.5 percent, profit conversion increased from 23.5 percent to 27.9 percent delivering this impressive GOPPAR growth.
In November, Belfast hotels demonstrated once again that RevPAR alone can be a misleading indicator of hotel health. There was a decline of 1.1 percent in this metric, but RevPAR and GOPPAR levels went up by 1.3 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.
A drop in demand of 2.8 percentage points with a 2.3 percent increase in ARR accounted for the RevPAR decline. However, an increase in non-rooms revenue per available room from C&B room hire (up 36.9 percent), food (up 8.4 percent), and golf (up 3.0 percent) led to a TRevPAR growth of 1.3 percent to $137.32. While hoteliers also suffered from a 1.9 percent increase in payroll, a 3.6 percent decrease in overheads per available room helped to achieve a slight increase in GOPPAR of 0.5 percent to $40.48 compared to the same period last year.
Derby hoteliers experienced an increase in revenues with both RevPAR and TRevPAR increasing by 7.1 percent and 11.6 percent respectively. However, this increase was not sufficient to deliver a profit growth in November, as GOPPAR declined by 33.2 percent.
The RevPAR performance was achieved through combined rises in occupancy of 2.8 percentage points to 70.5 percent and in ARR of 7.1 percent to $94.77. A general decrease in non-rooms revenue per available room from leisure (down 6.6 percent), food (down 5.8 percent) and beverage (down 5.6 percent) softened TRevPAR to $123.39, representing only a 1.4 percent increase compared to the same period last year. On the other hand, operating costs grew and negated the revenue increases, leading to a 1.4 percent decrease in departmental operating profit per available room, and a significant 41.0 percent surge in overheads per available room further impacted profitability levels resulting in a GOPPAR decline of 33.2 percent to $21.06.
