European Hotel Bookings & Business Travel Rates Surpass Pre-COVID Levels

Bookings in hotels across Europe have exceeded pre-pandemic levels in June, with the recovery rates being especially enhanced in the last two months.

According to HotelHub, which provides booking technology for TMCs and their customers, European hotel bookings in June exceeded 2019 booking levels, up by 80 per cent, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

HotelHub’s index for the second quarter of 2022 reveals that hotel bookings this June were at 120 per cent of June 2019 levels. In addition, international travel from Europe has been on a continuous rise, reaching the pre-COVID levels, with international hotel bookings in Europe representing 41 per cent of all transactions by the end of June, being only three percentage points below 2019 levels.

As data from the HotelHub reveals, the average daily rates in some of the major European cities, such as London and Paris, have also increased on a monthly basis. For example, prices in London in June already surpassed the same month three years ago, while those in Paris are almost entirely approaching pre-COVID levels.

London’s average daily rate was €310 (£263) in June, increased by €281 (£200) at the start of 2022, and an increase on the average of €339(£241) was noticed in 2019. Meanwhile, rates in Paris during June reached $231 (€230), just below 2019’s average of $246 (€245).

“We have seen a significant increase in global hotel transactions made by our TMC customers in the past two months, which means volumes have now exceeded pre-pandemic levels. It’s also very encouraging to see that international travel in Europe is now more or less back to the same levels as 2019,” Eric Meierhans, HotelHub’s chief commercial officer, said, also noting that this is very good news for the hotel sector and business travel.

On the other hand, this isn’t quite the case with the hotels in the United States; while international travel did increase, the growth slightly fell in May and June, which could be linked to the war in Ukraine causing uncertainty, as Meirhans pointed out.

He also said that bookings through online booking tools such as Booking and Airbnb had surged significantly in April, May, and June, which HotelHub’s experts did not expect.

“We anticipated that corporates would need the support and advice of their TMC to book hotels offline whilst they navigate the return to travel and ongoing flight disruption. Perhaps the current TMC staff shortages and servicing issues are driving corporates towards greater use of their online booking tool,” he also said.

Data from the European Office for Statistics, Eurostat, reveals that the number of nights booked through online platforms surged by 34 per cent in 2021, with the main cities being Orléans (55.3 per cent), Ostend (49.6 per cent) and Lugano (49.1 per cent).