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Thursday 18 January 2024

With demand for hotel rooms likely to remain low for much of 2021, there will be great value on offer those companies looking to reunite their teams for a residential conference in London or away day next Spring - What better way to kick start 2021 after a year of WFH, Zoom calls and virtual events?

According to the well-respected PWC UK Hotels Forecast occupancy rates in 2021 are forecast to be 55% across the UK and could take four years to return to pre COVID-19 levels. “This is a stark reality for a once optimistic industry, which had seen a decade of growth post the global financial crisis.”

“Given the large number of uncertainties around COVID-19 restrictions, forecasting hotel demand is extremely challenging. The availability of a vaccine that can be quickly and widely administered is key to demand recovery coupled with consumer confidence to travel”.

The forecast for occupancy in 2021 is predicted to be 52.4% for London and 59.2% for the regions. This represents a decline of 31% and 16% respectively when compared to 2019, showing the scale of the commercial challenges facing hotels when planning for the year ahead.

The impact of weak demand as well as an above-average increase in new supply with several new hotel venues coming on line, both contribute to the forecast low levels of occupancy and average daily rate which is predicted to drop from £148 in 2019 to just £112 in 2021.

Here at Venue Search London, we believe that this short-term softer market will deliver tremendous value and opportunity to those companies looking to get their teams back together safely in the late spring early summer.

Whether it is a company conference in London or an away weekend at a country house hotel venues, we are confident that we can deliver great value to those clients looking at residential events prior to what we expect to be a stronger return of hotel revenues next autumn.

Business travel will remain at far lower levels for many months to come and key “gateway cities” relying heavily on international leisure, or corporate and events driven demand, including London, are forecast to experience lower occupancy rates in 2021 compared to coast and country locations, who will see a benefit from continuing “Staycation” activity throughout 2021.

Although forecasts for 2021 show some relief compared to the precipitous declines of 2020, this is far from ‘business as usual’, with room occupancy rates across the UK forecast to be at the lowest level since hotel benchmarking services began gathering data in the 1970s.

We hope that companies will look to support the UK hotels industry, whilst benefitting from these great short-term value opportunities that will be on offer as we work back towards business as usual in 2021.