Perth hotel industry figures have rejected claims by some businesses of a periodic shortage in room availability, despite occupancy rates in city hotels rising to their highest level in recent years.
Perth hotel industry figures have rejected claims by some businesses of a periodic shortage in room availability, despite occupancy rates in city hotels rising to their highest level in recent years.
Although tourism travel from a number of key markets to Western Australia has dropped this year, the increase in the business travel sector, as a result of the state’s economic boom and burgeoning investment opportunity, has driven hotel occupancy rates up.
KPMG Perth chairman of partners Steve Scudamore said that, at times during the past 12 months, the company has had trouble finding accommodation for its interstate employees and international clients.
“It’s not always that easy in the short term to get accommodation at the key hotels,” Mr Scudamore told WA Business News.
“It’s the same with our clients; a lot of them are flying in from overseas, and it’s not always that easy to find good accommodation.”
Mr Scudamore said the need for adequate quality accommodation was more acute with the growing number of potential investors currently focused on WA.
“To me, it would seem that it is right time that we did have another hotel in the city,” he said.
Assured Hospitality sales and marketing manager Nevinia Davenport said that, although the high occupancy rates were good for hotels, the increase in business travel to the city was putting a strain on occupancies during peak tourist season.
“It’s a great situation to be in…However, there’s still underlying concern,” she said.
“What it’s limiting is the ability for tourism to really take hold in a manner that it has the potential to be able to. We’ve got a great resources industry that is booming at the moment, and as a result all of the hotels in Perth are seeing fantastic occupancy percentages.
“What it does mean however, is that Perth is becoming harder and harder from a tourist perspective to visit.”
But Australian Hotels Association executive director Bradley Woods said any suggestions of a hotel accommodation shortage in Perth based on a handful of nights with close to full occupancy was ill-informed.
“We’re not aware there is a problem – except on a couple of isolated days and weeks of the year, yes, there is a high demand there,” he said.
“I see the data every day…I know that in the last 12 months you can count on one hand the number of nights there’s been an average occupancy of anything close to 95 per cent.”
Mr Woods said the solution would be met by the market, as developers and property investors recognised they would get a good return on their investment in the building of hotels.
“Given that room rates are so low and have been for many years, the return on investment has not been as high as what it could have been,” he said.
“Were starting to see a turnaround in rates being charged to a point of actually achieving those higher levels.”
Congress West principal Katie Clarke said finding accommodation could be a major problem during peak periods,
particularly when large conferences occurred on the same weekend as major events.
Ms Clarke said hotels were now increasingly adopting more aggressive contractual obligations for her conference groups, with penalties applied for up to 90 days out in some instances.
“It is hard for hotels because at other times of the year they’re not selling out to, say, 90 per cent occupancy, but at peak times everybody wants [rooms] and they can sell out their hotels twice over,” she said.
In the six months to June 2006, $25 million worth of accommodation projects were completed in the Perth region, including the Holiday Inn Burswood and the Medina Executive Barrack Plaza adding 291 and 148 rooms respectively.
A further $78 million worth of new accommodation are currently under construction.
