Hotel e-marketing company, TravelClick, has released the results of its quarterly eMonitoring service, revealing global hotel revenue from electronic bookings has risen 16.8% in the first quarter of 2007.
TravelClick also revealed the top ten worldwide destinations for electronic hotel bookings in the first quarter of 2007, with London in the lead at 1,464,544 bookings, up a sizeable 18.9% from the same quarter last year.
Interestingly, all other destinations on the list were in the US: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington/Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston and Boston. However, none of these showed anything like the rise of London bookings, with New York increasing by 6.6% and Los Angeles a mere 0.2% since last year.
The number of bookings made through global distribution systems (GDS) and key internet sites has grown 5.7% compared with the same period in 2006, while the Average Daily Rate (ADR) increased by 10.5%. Length of stay remained consistent at 2.11 nights.
Reservations made by travel management companies (TMCs) and agents represent 81.2% of total hotel bookings and are a key source of higher rate business for the hotels, with average room rates 43.6% dearer than internet fares.
”The luxury hotel market is benefiting greatly from travel agent-generated bookings to sustain high levels of ADR growth,” said e-marketing vice-president, John Hach. ”The ADR growth and room night increase are creating a more than $100 (”49.50) per night ”wall” between the luxury and upscale market segments.
”Highly targeted advertising strategies are vital to differentiate luxury properties that are vying for the large ADR opportunity within the travel agent channel.”
Indeed, bookings for the luxury segment grew by 15% during the quarter, while upscale and mid-scale rose slightly by 3.7% and 3.6% respectively and economy reservations fell by 1.5%. This despite the fact that ADR rose consistently between the top three segments, at 10.3% for luxury and upscale, 10.8% for mid-scale.