Tourism analyser

State of data: 31.12.2023

"No matter whether you look at room occupancy, room rates or room revenues: With the rising number of overnight stays, the most important hotel performance indicators are also on the upswing again," reports Alexander Trobitz, Managing Director and Head of Hotel Services at BNP Paribas Real Estate GmbH. Thus, the occupancy rate in October reached almost 70 %, an increase of around 26 percentage points in the last six months (March 2022: 44 % occupancy) and matching the figures seen in the pre-Corona years of just over 70 %. In the biggest tourist destinations, first and foremost Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, monthly values of almost 79%, 76% and 73% were already achieved in october again. A similar picture appears when looking at the price and revenue indicators ADR and RevPAR, which, looking back over the past six months, have increased by one and almost two thirds respectively to almost €127 and €87 per room in October.

Considerable resilience in leisure tourism, city tourism picks up noticeably again in 2022

Despite the looming turnaround in tourism indicators, it is worth noting the extremely difficult situation for the hotel market in 2020 and 2021, each of which saw only around 60% of overnight stays from 2019. "However, this certainly doesn’t mean that the hospitality industry came to a complete standstill during this period, but rather that significant shifts in travel behaviour were observed, which are also likely to have an impact on the tourism sector in Germany in the future," explains Alexander Trobitz. In 2019, for example, three cities - Berlin (34 million guests), Munich (18 million guests) and Hamburg (15 million guests) - were still in the top five most popular travel destinations, while in 2020 and 2021 holiday regions such as the Baltic and North Seas, Allgäu, Vorpommern or the Baltic coast of Mecklenburg occupied the top positions among travel destinations.

Overall, despite the drastic measures taken during the Corona crisis, these holiday hotspots only suffered minor declines in 2021, with an average drop of around 17 % compared to 2019. In contrast, the largest German metropolises Berlin, Hamburg and Munich have dropped by almost 60 % in the same period. However, it is remarkable that the top markets were able to recover just as quickly as they lost ground in the years characterised by lockdown phases. Accordingly, the number of overnight for the three largest German cities at the end of the third quarter of 2022 were on average almost 130 % higher than the figures for the comparable period of the previous year. In holiday regions, which had presented themselves as relatively stable in recent years, the recovery curve in 2022 was therefore also significantly flatter than in the largest city destinations, with an increase of less than 30 %.

Whether and to what extent hotel investments can also benefit from the positive trends in performance indicators remains to be seen, especially against the backdrop of the financial market-driven uncertainties on the entire commercial investment market. "Deals such as the purchase of the A-Rosa on Sylt in the third quarter of 2022 are, however, both a positive signal for further development and an indication that German holiday regions have already been moved onto the map of the hotel investment market," Alexander Trobitz points to the prospects and opportunities for hotel investments that are likely to result from the trends in the tourism sector.