A combination of a drop in sales volume, lower hotel occupation rates and a reduction in room rates have all resulted in a decline in profitability of some 66.3 percent among hotels on the Andalusian coast of southern Spain, that’s according to a survey carried out by the Partnership for Excellence in Tourism (Exceltur).
The report also shows an increase in demand from foreign tourists wanting to visit city destinations in Andalusia and a decline in the number of foreigners going to the coastal areas of southern Spain. However, thanks to the crisis, more domestic tourists from other regions of Spain are travelling to the coast of Andalusia.
According to the survey, the increase in the number of Spanish visitors arriving on the southern “costas” of Spain is due to the quantity of special offers and discounts being promoted by both tour operators and the hotels in this part of Spain. However, the oversupply of hotel rooms available in the area still exceeds the levels of demand which has led to a further drop in occupancy in most of the hotels surveyed in this part of Spain, with a matching reduction in profits compared to the months of April, May and June of last year.
The results of the survey by Exceltur, which ended on 6th July 2010, show that almost 56 percent of Andalusian hotels experienced a strong decline in their sales, mainly in the traditional coastal holiday areas of Spain. However, the Exceltur report highlights the “positive behaviour” in some of the other popular tourist destinations in Andalusia such as Seville, Marbella and Málaga, which are showing signs of recovering from the low occupancy levels which were the result of the international economic and financial crisis and which affected the hotel sector all over Spain in 2009.
The report also highlights the “spiral of low prices” which began in 2008 in the hotel rates of this autonomous region of Spain. Performance data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), confirm a fall of some 10€ per day in the average rate for five star hotels and 7.40€ in the four star hotels of Adalusia. The low occupancy levels and demand of recent years have not yet fully recovered and in 2010 the number of hotel reservations are similar to those of 2004, although currently there are around 20% more hotel rooms available in this region of Spain.