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Hoteliers: Pessimistic for the future

01/03/2004 12:44
Within the framework of a survey carried out by a private company on behalf of the European Union and the Finance Ministry, seven of the ten hotel units (70%) saw the situation in January 2004 deteriorating compared to December 2003, while none of the hotel units saw an improvement in this period. 30% consider that the situation has remained unchanged.

Specifically, 63% said that the turnover has dropped, 36% said that it has remained stable and only 1% said that their turnover has increased.

However, the vast majority of the businesses (84%) said that the number of employees has remained at the same levels, 16% said that it has reduced the number of staff, whereas no respondent said that it has increased the number of employees.

77% of the respondents replied that they have left the prices stable, 23% said that the prices have dropped and only 1% said that prices have showed an increase.

Despite the fact that only 1% of the respondents expect improvement in the future, only 27% expects deterioration for January compared to 51% in December. 27% of the hotel owners expect that the situation will remain stable. It is worth noting that 38% anticipates a drop in the turnover, 62% anticipates that the turnover will remain unchanged and no hotel owner believes that the turnover will increase.

Similarly, 87% of the hotel units said that the number of employees will remain unchanged and 13% see a decline in the staff, while 82% of the businesses said that they do not expect price increases and 18% said that it expects decline in prices.

85% replied that it expects a lower demand in services, 1% expects that demand will be higher and 14% anticipates that demand will remain at the same levels. The provision of services in the hotel sector may be hampered by the insufficient demand (60%), the financial problems (7%), other problems (6%).

Overall, hotel owners anticipate that the average usage of labour force stands at 57% compared to 71.6% for October 2003, while the average occupancy ratio in the fourth quarter of 2003 reached 42%. The prospects of the average occupancy ratio, however, for the first quarter of 2004 is expected to reach 28.5%.

A similar survey in the hotel sector has been also carried out in the remaining acceding countries.