It was a very good year for the Asian hotel industry in 2016. Having become an economic zone at the end of 2015, theASEAN - the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - has benefited as much as the rest of the region. At a conference in Bangkok At the end of January, Jesper Palmqvist, STR analyst in Asia, indicated that growth in international arrivals in the main ASEAN countries ranged from +4% for the Malaysia and +27% for Vietnam. Only Burma (Myanmar), Brunei and Laos recorded a negative trend last year.
In the hotels sector, revenue per available room (RevPar) showed a fairly positive trend in the Asia-Pacific region. While it was weak in China (+0.3%), the trend was positive in Australia (+2.2%), Korea (+3.1%) and Japan (+4%).
In the ASEAN region, however, sales were slightly down, with RevPar falling by 0.3%. Jesper Palmqvist attributes this partly to the fall in certain currencies - in particular the Malaysian Ringgit, down 8%, and the Philippine Peso, down 5% in 2016 - but also to fierce competition on certain markets such as Singapore.
The cities of Hanoi (+6.4%) and Bangkok (+5.5%) saw the strongest increases in revenue per room, while Kuala Lumpur and Manila posted virtually stagnant results, with +0.5% and +0.1% respectively. Singapore and Jakarta, on the other hand, posted negative growth in hotel revenues. In Jakarta, unit revenue per room fell by 8.2%, while in Singapore the decline was 4.8%.
Thailand continues to perform very well, outperforming the other countries in the region, a situation that STR explains by the return to political stability that was confirmed in 2016.
While Asia's RevPar is the lowest of all the continents - at US$69.34$ last year, compared with an average of US$85.18$ for Europe and US$80.31$ for the Americas - ASEAN stands out from the rest of the continent. Revenue per available room is the highest in Asia, at over 75$, while the average price is 110.26 $, compared with 100.46 $ for the continent as a whole.
