Chennai: The festive season has brought cheer to the hospitality sector as both room mates and revenues of hotels saw growth in September on a yearly as well as sequential basis.Average room rates across hotels and cities ranged between Rs 7,300 – Rs 7,500 in September. This was 1-3 per cent higher than September 2023 and 3-5 per cent more than August 2024, marking both yearly and sequential gain.Occupancy rates at 61-63 per cent in September 2024 witnessed steady year-on-year growth of 2-4 per cent and remained stable compared to August 2024.These two factors helped the Revenue per available rooms (RevPAR) of around Rs 4453 – Rs 4725 increase by 5-7 per cent both yearly and sequentially.According to a report by HVS Anarock, sustained demand growth has led to consistent improvements in occupancy rates across key markets in September 2024 compared to the same period last year. “Domestic leisure travel, demand from meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE), including weddings, and business travel and good road connectivity are driving occupancies and tariffs and in turn RevPAR,” said Pradeep Shetty, president, FHRAI.Bengaluru led the way with a notable 8-10 percentage points (pp) year-on-year increase in occupancy rates, followed by New Delhi, which recorded a 6-8 pp growth. Jaipur and Kolkata were the only markets that saw marginal decline in occupancy rates.In the case of average room rates, Hyderabad posted an impressive 22-24 per cent year-on-year increase in average rates, while Mumbai and Chennai recorded gains of 10-12 per cent.New Delhi saw a different scenario where occupancy rates rose by 6-8 pp, but the average rates dropped sharply by 23-25 per cent compared to the previous year. This decline can largely be attributed to the G20 summit held the previous year, which temporarily boosted prices in the market.For the July-September quarter, average room rates across cities grew by 4-6 per cent against the same quarter in 2023 and the RevPAR was up by 7-9 per cent. However, occupancies have seen only marginal rise.Domestic air passenger traffic of 39.1 million in the September quarter was 6 per cent higher than the year-ago quarter.
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