Hotel Rates Rise in Paris, Recover Elsewhere In France

Hotels in Paris saw rates rise for April from the previous year despite a dip in occupancy, while hotel revenues in some other cities in France returned to pre-recession levels, according to a report published this week by Deloitte.

With Paris’ airports closed for five days during the volcanic ash cloud interruption, April occupancy in the city’s hotels dropped by 3 percent in the midprice tier and by 1 percent in the upscale tier, according to the report. At the same time, average daily rate increased by 1.5 percent in the upscale tier and by 3.9 percent in the midprice tier. This kept RevPAR largely stable in Paris.

The rest of Ile-de-France took a harder hit, however. Hotels in Seine-Saint-Denis and the Val-d’Oise saw RevPAR drops between 11 percent and 23 percent in the midprice tier, according to the report.

Outside of Paris, some cities saw significant increases in RevPAR, including Lyon, where upscale RevPAR increased by 32 percent, and Bordeaux, where it increased 42 percent. This puts them largely in line with their performance levels in 2008, according to Deloitte.

Other cities that had performed relatively better in April 2009—Strasbourg and Rouen, for example, both of which had benefited from international events last year—had significant declines in hotel performance this April. Upscale rates and RevPAR were down by more than 25 percent and 36 percent, respectively, in Strasbourg, and Rouen had RevPAR declines across the board of about 10 percent.