Scandic Hotels is seeing sharply higher net sales, increasing
occupancy and growing corporate demand, the group announced as it unveiled its
financials for the second quarter of 2021.
The group’s president and CEO Jens Mathiesen said, ““We
see significant potential for continued improvement in the
important metropolitan regions going forward as more events are held
in the cities and business travel recovers. In June, market occupancy in the
Nordic capitals was considerably higher than in the same month last year, but
it was still only about one-third of what it was before the pandemic.
“There is great pent-up demand for meetings among
our corporate customers, and we’ve seen an increase in booking requests for the
fall. During the year, Scandic introduced a number of initiatives to offer new,
more flexible solutions for meetings. Corporate customers, however, are
continuing to operate with short lead-times, which makes it difficult to assess
the pace at which business will pick up after the summer.”
The group said that net sales for the second
quarter were SKr1,640 million (£138 million), up 147 per cent from SKr 665
million (£56 million) last quarter. Average occupancy increased to 27.1 per cent
compared with 17.5 percent during the previous quarter. The rate of increase
accelerated at the end of the quarter, with occupancy reaching 35.9 per cent in
June.
The group announced adjusted EBITDA for the quarter
of -SKr 364 million (-£30.6 million), an improvement on the -SKr1,138 million (-£95.8
million) the previous quarter. Results for the quarter were impacted positively
by state aid of SKr203 million (£17 million) and rent discounts of
approximately SKr 105 million (£8.8 million).
Mathiesen added, “At the end of the quarter,
Scandic’s available liquidity totalled more than SKr 2,100 million (£176.8
million) and with an occupancy rate of more than 50 per cent, we expect to
generate positive cash flow. After just over a year with a sharp focus on
costs, Scandic today is a more cost-efficient company than before the pandemic,
giving us a good opportunity to achieve higher profitability than earlier when
the hotel market improves.”