Perth’s hotels are getting together to shore up their market position.
PERTH'S major hotels are getting on the front foot in their efforts to maintain occupancy levels, forming an advisory group to liaise directly with government on how the industry is faring.
The Australian Hotels Association (WA) has formed an Operator Tourism Advisory Group, which will meet monthly to discuss the state of play in the current economic climate, and in particular how businesses have been affected.
Accommodation hotel general managers will form part of the group, along with key AHA staff.
The information analysed by the advisory group will be discussed at roundtable meetings hosted by Tourism WA and will also be reported directly back to the state government.
"WA is well placed in terms of the corporate market, but we are seeing a downturn in the number of leisure visitors," AHA WA chief executive Bradley Woods said.
Perth's hotel market is coming from a strong position. It has been the country's strongest performer in recent years in occupancy rates, average room rates, and revenue per available room.
Hyatt Regency Perth general manager Robert Dawson said while consumer spending generally was softening across the board, the hotel was continuing to perform strongly.
Mr Dawson said it was too early to judge what effect the global downturn would have on the local industry.
"It's still very early days, but the business is still pretty much continuing in the same vein," he said.
The Duxton Hotel Perth general manager Bruce Doig said apart from a softening in inbound visitor numbers, the hotel was still achieving high occupancy, similar to other five-star hotels.
But hotels needed to be practical in the current climate.
"We're trying to look into our crystal ball to see what the market is going to do," Mr Doig told WA Business News.
"We need to be practical - we are in a global recession and companies are trimming back expenditures.
"If occupancy goes down to a certain amount, you'll find certain price reductions on websites. That's normal; airlines do the same thing.
"There's ways and means to stimulate the market."
Outside of the CBD, one West Perth hotel, while being ahead of where it was the same time last year, is about 10 per cent behind its forecasts.
A number of city hotels are planning refurbishment programs this year, taking advantage of the quieter times to make improvements.
The Duxton is looking to do an extensive soft refurbishment of its rooms and new paintwork over the next 12 months.
"You have to look at the product and you have to have that point of difference because you're competing in that market," Mr Doig said.
"It's good if we get a quietening off if you need to do those things, with the high occupancies we've had it's very hard to do those things."
The Hyatt Regency Perth has submitted an application to its parent company, the Melbourne-based Grand Hotel Group, to conduct a major refurbishment of all of its rooms.
The refurbishments will be the first since the hotel refurbished its presidential suites in late 2007 and a light room refurbishment in 2004.
The Citigate Perth Hotel is continuing with its $9 million upgrades program, which will involve a complete soft refurbishment of the 278 guestrooms and suites over a six-month period.
Stage two of the program is the total renovation of Seasons on Wellington restaurant and Ovations Bar, and the hotels conferencing facilities, which commenced late 2008.
Hotel analyst Alan Boys said the Perth market had enough momentum to not experience any significant declines.
"At this stage hotels are not into a mad discounting situation, not in the city. There was a bit in January, but January is always a soft month," he said.
"Hotels have fought too hard to get rates up, they're showing some resolve not to allow room rates to decline.