Hoteliers To Review 2011/12 Winter Season

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Hotels

Wednesday, 13 June 2012 02:30

By Everton Barnes

Antigua St John's - The performance of the country’s hotel sector during the 2011/12 winter tourist season is coming up for review at a board meeting of the Antigua Hotels and Tourist Association (AHTA) slated for next Tuesday.

General Manager of the AHTA Neil Forrester said hoteliers will compare notes about the performance of individual hotels at the meeting. He said it is difficult to give a true assessment of the performance of the hotel sector although he said arrivals were slightly higher than last year.

“The performance of the hotels is difficult to gauge based solely on occupancy. This is because the hotels have had to discount their rates over the last several seasons, so while the numbers may be up, their earnings may very well be down,” he explained.

He noted that rates have been discounted for three consecutive years starting in 2009, so that in order to get a true assessment of the earnings of the hotels, 2008 is the best base year to use for that assessment.

Forrester also had difficulty in making an accurate forecast for the hotel sector for the upcoming summer months. He said this is primarily because bookings at these properties are coming quite late.

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“These bookings are coming today for tomorrow and that makes it difficult to make accurate forecasts. For example, one property had forecast occupancy for May at 40 per cent and a surge in late bookings saw the property with occupancy of 70 per cent,” he disclosed.

He said the hotels just have to keep plugging away with their marketing efforts to generate more business.

Meanwhile, the AHTA general manager will be in Jamaica this week for the 50th anniversary of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourist Association (CHTA) festivities as well as the CHTA annual general meeting.

He said there are several workshops associated with the meeting that will look at all aspects of the tourism and hotel sector in the Caribbean and examine ways to meet the challenges the sector faces.

The curtains came down on the winter tourist season at the end of April. The government has lauded the slight increase in arrivals.

Tourism is Antigua & Barbuda’s main income earner.

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