Six Dubai hotel districts to see decline in RevPAR
Occupancy remains as high as 84% in JBR and Marina hotels, Colliers International says
Six of Dubai’s key hotel districts are expected to see declines in RevPAR (revenue per available room), a key hotel industry metric, according to a new study by Colliers International.
All six areas, which include Palm Jumeirah and Dubai Marina, are set to drop between 1 per cent and 4 per cent in RevPAR, compared to 2017. The real estate consultant said that the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and Shaikh Zayed Road would drop by 3 per cent, while the Palm Jumeirah is set to drop by 2 per cent.
Festival City, which is home to the InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, and Holiday Inn, will see a decline of 1 per cent.
Meanwhile, JBR and the Dubai Marina are set to suffer the steepest drop in RevPAR, at 4 per cent, despite the fact that the two well-known areas are expected to see a 5 per cent uptick in RevPAR over the next two months, compared to the same period last year.
Conversely, Shaikh Zayed Road and DIFC are expected to do worse over the next two months than they did last summer, with RevPAR dropping by one per cent.
Elsewhere in the UAE, despite poor occupancy levels, Abu Dhabi is expected to perform better in May, June, and July than it did over the same three months last year.
Abu Dhabi City is set to see a 4 per cent increase in RevPAR, while Abu Dhabi Beach is forecast to grow RevPAR by 5 per cent.
Fujairah and Sharjah are likewise expected to post positive results, for both their May to July performances, and their full year RevPAR results.
Colliers highlights Cairo as a big winner in its latest report, stating that “the market continues to grow from the low base of last year. The growth in RevPAR is driven by occupancy boosted by growth in corporate travel, meetings, incentive, conferences, and events (MICE), as well as the leisure segment.”
Despite this improvement, Cairo is still set to suffer a 15 per cent drop in RevPAR in 2018, according to the report. Occupancy remains higher in Dubai than anywhere else in the region, as high as 84 per cent in JBR and Marina throughout 2018.
In Oman and Bahrain, however, it is a different story: Muscat and Manama’s occupancy is expected to be 55 per cent and 50 per cent throughout 2018 respectively.