11 Sep 2012
The weather might have been chillier, but hotel rates heated up across Australia this past winter according to HotelsCombined's year-over-year price index.
Based on average hotel prices throughout June, July and August, most Aussie hotels saw healthy rate increases in winter 2012 compared to winter 2011. In Australia, Byron Bay scored the highest price increase, with an 18% rise in the average nightly hotel rate of $176.71 in 2011 to $209.20 in 2012. The second-highest rate spike came from Cairns, with a 16% rise in the average hotel rate of $117.51 in 2011 to $136.59 in 2012.
But it wasn't all good news for the Aussie hotel industry - Broome and Adelaide were the only two major Australian destinations to experience a decline in hotel rates last winter. In Broome, the cost of an average winter hotel stay dropped 14% from $263.79 in 2011 to $232.97 in 2012. In Adelaide, the average nightly rate dipped 10% from $136.10 in 2011 to $122.87 in 2012. Meanwhile, Hamilton Island maintained its average hotel rate of $389 from winter 2011 into winter 2012.
The full list of winter hotel rate increases/decreases in major Australian destinations:
Increase
Byron Bay +18%
Cairns +17%
Hobart +15%
Darwin +14%
Gold Coast +13%
Brisbane +10%
Canberra +10%
Perth +7%
Melbourne +5%
Sydney +4%
Decrease
Broome -14%
Adelaide -10%
Over in the Northern Hemisphere, some interesting trends emerged from the concurrent summer season. Lahore, Pakistan saw the greatest jump in the 2012 summer, with a whopping 169% increase in average hotel rates over 2011.
The Middle East also continued to prove its worth as a booming tourism hub - all major destinations spiked in price from summer 2011 to summer 2012 with the exception of Jerusalem and Doha, Qatar. Namely, Dubai hotel rates rose an impressive 56%, followed by Islamic pilgrimage hot spot Medina by 44%.
Kiev was similarly a success story, with summer 2012 hotel rates having risen 56%.
In Yekaterinburg, Russia, the hotel industry wasn't quite so lucrative, experiencing the largest hotel rate decline in the world as their summer season prices fell 59% from 2011 to 2012.Other Northern Hemisphere destinations experiencing significant declines in summer hotel rates this past season include Italy and Greece, likely as a result of the current European financial crisis. Athens hotel rates went down 27% during the 2012 summer while every major Italian destination besides Florence experienced a hotel rate decrease.
About HotelsCombined
Aussie owned and operated, HotelsCombined is the world's leading hotel price comparison site. Created in 2005 as a solution to the problems facing the online accommodation market - namely, that consumers had to visit several websites to compare prices before making a reservation - the free online service searches and compares more than 2 million hotel deals in over 120,000 destinations worldwide, aggregating prices from 100s of online travel agents and hotel chains including HotelClub, Agoda, Hotels.com, Booking.com, Travelocity, Expedia, Hotels.com, and InterContinental. Based in Sydney, HotelsCombined is currently visited by more than 100 million users every year and is available in over 220 countries.
About the HotelsCombined Price Index
The HotelsCombined Price Index is a survey of hotel prices in 1,000 major city destinations across the world. The international scale of the sites makes the HotelsCombined Price Index the most comprehensive benchmark available, incorporating hotel price data direct from hotels and online travel agent websites.
For commentary or to request further data:
Kristen McKenzie
Head of Community and Public Relations
+61 2 8006 9337
