Hotel prices will generally rise in 2023. The number of domestic popular hotel bookings on Qunar platform increased by 514% year-on-year in 2019

Did your hotel increase its price during the National Day holiday? This year's National Day Golden Week can be described as a "luxury version of the Golden Week", with the National Day holiday and the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday lasting 8 days, which further stimulated the public's willingness to travel. The prices of hotels near tourist attractions in many popular cities will generally increase by more than 2 to 3 times, but despite the price increase, hotel reservations are still soaring, and many people are still unable to find a room.

In fact, since the beginning of this year, with the great recovery of the tourism industry, the hotel industry, as an important link in the tourism industry chain, has made a lot of money!

According to the semi-annual report, Huazhu Group, Jinjiang Hotels, and BTG Hotels achieved at least 30% growth in revenue, with ADR (average room rate) and OCC (occupancy rate) both exceeding the same period in 2019, and turned losses into profits. Atour Group also saw a significant increase in performance in the first half of the year, with a net profit of 256 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 270.86%.

With the start of the National Day Golden Week in the second half of the year, the hotel industry will remain on the fast track of growth.

Hotel room rates rose across the board during the National Day holiday, and bookings remained strong

The popularity of travel during the National Day Golden Week is increasing, and hotel booking prices in popular cities are also rising. According to Ctrip data, hotel booking prices in some cities are even higher than those during the summer and May Day holidays.

Xia Jingyu, who planned to travel to Fujian during the National Day holiday, also told Lieyun.com that the price of a twin room at the Hanting Hotel in Fuzhou, which he had booked in advance on September 14, had soared to 410 yuan, and the price was still rising, now up to 501 yuan.

Source: Lieyun.com

Li Siqi told Lieyun.com that the price of a double room at Changsha Yijian Hotel that she booked on October 1, 2021 was 411 yuan, while this year the price of the same room type at the hotel is 678 yuan.

Source: Lieyun.com

Lieyun.com randomly selected several hotels around popular city scenic spots. During the National Day holiday, room rates were at least quadrupled compared to usual, and many room types were shown as "tight".

According to reports, in many popular tourist cities, the prices of economy hotels during the National Day holiday are approaching those of high-end resort hotels. The room rate of a hotel in Qingdao is 61 yuan per night on weekdays, but it rose to 721 yuan per night during the National Day holiday, a 10-fold increase.

During the National Day holiday, not only domestic travel is booming, but outbound travel is also equally popular.

The prices of many hotels in Macau have risen to more than NT$1,000 per night, three times higher than usual. Among them, the basic room types of many two-star and three-star hotels have risen from the usual NT$400 to as high as NT$1,500 on the night of October 1.

Data released by multiple platforms also confirm the popularity of hotels during this year's National Day Golden Week.

As of September 15, the number of domestic popular hotel bookings on Qunar platform increased by 514% year-on-year compared with 2019. The number of advance hotel bookings in popular cities such as Beijing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu, Changsha, etc. increased by more than 3 times year-on-year compared with 2019. Among them, Beijing increased by 5.4 times, ranking first, while Hangzhou and Wuhan increased by 4.8 times and 4.5 times respectively.

Source: Qunar Big Data Research Institute

The data from the "National Day Holiday Travel Trends" released by Fliggy on September 13 also showed that the number of domestic travel product bookings for the National Day holiday increased nearly 6 times year-on-year, and hotel bookings have far exceeded the same period in 2019.

Behind the general increase in hotel prices, on the one hand, the market supply and demand has reached a point where supply exceeds demand. Hotel supply cannot meet all travel needs in a short period of time and is showing a growth trend.

On the other hand, in recent years, the product structure of many hotel groups has been upgraded. Although the number of economy hotels is still growing, their proportion is gradually declining, while the proportion of mid- to high-end hotels continues to rise.

According to the financial report, in the first half of this year, Jinjiang Hotels, Huazhu Group and BTG Hotels closed 204, 431 and 348 stores respectively.

Among them, most are economy and low-quality development stores. Take Huazhu Group as an example. In the second quarter, 130 of the 216 stores it closed were low-quality economy soft brands and Hanting 1.0 products.

In 2020, Huazhu Group's low-quality economy soft brands and Hanting 1.0 products accounted for 25.9%. By the first half of this year, the figure had dropped below 10%.

Jinjiang Hotels and BTG Hotels will also focus on the mid- to high-end hotel market. In the first half of this year, mid- to high-end brands accounted for 80% of Jinjiang Hotels' brand matrix, covering business travel, vacation, and personalized business formats. BTG Hotels also publicly stated that it would increase its investment in the mid- to high-end hotel market and promote the construction of high-end and luxury hotels to create a high-end brand matrix.

Tourism is recovering and the hotel industry is booming

The hotel craze during the National Day Golden Week is not the first wave of craze this year.

According to data released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, in the first half of this year, the total number of domestic tourists reached 2.384 billion, a year-on-year increase of 63.9%, and domestic tourism revenue (total tourism expenditure) reached 2.3 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 95.9%.

With the great recovery of the tourism industry, the hotel industry, as an important link in the tourism industry chain, has also generally seen growth in performance.

According to the semi-annual report, in the first half of this year, the revenue and net profit of Jinjiang Hotels, Huazhu Group, BTG Hotels and Atour Group all saw significant growth.

Among them, Huazhu Group became the only listed hotel company in China with revenue of over 10 billion yuan in the first half of the year, with a revenue of 10.01 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 65.10%. Jinjiang Hotels, BTG Hotels, and Atour Group achieved revenue of 6.806 billion yuan, 3.608 billion yuan, and 1.867 billion yuan in the first half of the year, respectively, a year-on-year increase of 32.15%, 54.76%, and 93.10%.

In terms of profitability, BTG Hotels, Huazhu Group and Jinjiang Hotels all turned losses into profits, with net profits of 280 million yuan, 2.005 billion yuan and 523 million yuan respectively, up 172.87%, 304.59% and 550.76% year-on-year.

It is worth mentioning that Huazhu Group's profit of 2.005 billion yuan in the first half of this year has exceeded the 1.8 billion yuan for the whole year of 2019, and is nearly three times the 719 million yuan in the same period of 2019, an increase of 178.86%.

In addition, Atour Group's profits also increased significantly in the first half of the year, with a net profit of 256 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 270.86%.

Source: Lieyun.com

In addition to the impressive financial indicators, the three key indicators of hotel operations, RevPAR (average revenue per available room), ADR (average daily rate), and OCC (occupancy rate), the above four listed hotels also achieved substantial growth, especially in the second quarter.

Among them, in the second quarter, the RevPAR of Jinjiang Hotels in China increased by 56.63% year-on-year to 109.30% of the same period in 2019; the RevPAR of Atour Group was 384 yuan, recovering to 114.8% of the same period in 2019; the RevPAR of Huazhu Group was 250 yuan, recovering to 121% in the second quarter of 2019; the financial report of Ctrip Hotels showed that excluding lightly managed hotels, the RevPAR of all hotels was 181 yuan, an increase of 85.5% year-on-year, exceeding the same period in 2019 by 9.1%.

Source: Lieyun.com

In terms of ADR (average daily room rate) and OCC (occupancy rate), the above four hotels also exceeded the same period in 2019, among which Atour Group was particularly obvious. In the second quarter, its ADR and OCC were 475 yuan and 77.1% respectively.

For this wave of performance growth, in addition to the positive effects of the steady improvement of the macro economy and the continued recovery of domestic business travel and leisure tourism demand, under this general environment, hotels have also used various unique strategies to continue to deepen their business transformation.

Jinjiang Hotels is stepping up its digital transformation and plans to establish a business model that relies on a digital platform. According to the semi-annual report, during the reporting period, Jinjiang Hotels started the direct sales digital transformation, and the member direct sales booking rate continued to increase. In the first half of the year, the total number of its effective members reached 189.72 million.

BTG Hotels has put a lot of effort into its brand matrix. On the one hand, it explores mid- to high-end and even high-end brands; on the other hand, it digs into the sinking market and promotes younger and more fashionable iterations.

Huazhu Group has also been adjusting its inventory structure and product structure, including product upgrades at Hanting stores, further increasing the concentration of high-quality brands and products.

Atour Group has been deepening the moat of its scene retail business, and this business has gradually become its second growth curve. In the second quarter of this year, Atour's scene retail GMV reached 267 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of nearly 3 times. Atour's co-CFO Wu Jianfeng attributed the performance growth mainly to the simultaneous growth of the hotel business and the scene retail business.

In the first half of the year, "double increase" in revenue and net profit became the main theme of the hotel industry. In the second half of the year, with the start of the National Day Golden Week and the continuous upgrading of products and services in the hotel industry, the hotel industry will remain in the fast lane of growth.

Zilie Cloud Network