How is the Hospitality industry doing, post Covid-19?
There are a few answers to this, and as I mentioned in my previous blog the short one is: Rural hotels are coming back well, City Hotels are lagging behind.
Using data from across our hospitality clients, over 2.6 million user sessions, we have compared data across a few queries in order to see how different sectors have performed. We have also looked at the progress against last year’s hotel growth trends as a benchmark.
So what we will show are 3 statements that we have been able to garner from this data which will hopefully answer the above question and give you some idea of where you might stand or if you are ahead or behind your competitors.
Rural Hotels are massively outperforming City
The above graph gives some clear indication that people are looking to stay away from city centers. As lockdown was lifting the first thing people looked to do was to get away from cities and get a country break. However some cities, for instance, Brighton, have been performing over and above others and we will talk about this further on.
Small Hotels have grown more than large ones
The idea of an intimate hotel where you can be sure who is staying along with you seems to be more appealing to the late 2020 traveler than a large 100-bed hotel. we believe that there is an element of city/rural bias as large hotels tend to be based in more urban areas than smaller ones.
Costal breaks and southern weather have been big winners
Costal trips have been a large draw with beaches infamously crowded over the end of lockdown and the warm summer months. It seems that a lot of these users have been staying in hotels in the area for their trips. We have seen similar trends in revenue for our clients based on the coast, and PPC campaigns have been performing particularly strongly in coastal areas.
The weather this summer seems to have got people travelling in spite of the current climate, the south has seen a prolonged period of extremely good weather and this has given it the edge over northern travel.
All in all, we have seen that whilst the industry is still reeling the demand is coming back and that those who are making the efforts are seeming to capitalise on the cabin fever that has taken the country for the last few months. Obviously it is still crucial to keep safety at the front of our minds, but with careful planning, we are beginning to see a movement back to what we would call “normal”.