Funeral boosts demand for London flights and hotels
AIR FARES SKY ROCKET AS QUEEN’S DEATH LEADS TO SURGE IN CAPITAL BOOKINGS
HOTEL prices in London and airfares to the British capital are soaring as hundreds of thousands of people flock there ahead of the Queen’s funeral on Monday (19), potentially providing some respite to the city’s tourism business amid economic woes.
Since the announcement of the Queen’s death last Thursday (8), the average rate for a hotel in London increased to £334 per night from £212 per night, according to Hayley Berg, lead economist at travel startup Hopper.
The rush for accommodation comes as members of the public visit the capital to pay their respects and foreign delegations arrive for the funeral on Monday (19).
High-end hotels – Claridge’s, the Connaught, The Dorchester, and the Berkeley in central London’s Mayfair – were sold out for Sunday (18) night, their websites showed. Rates had breached £1,200 for a five-star hotel on Monday (13) and were expected to double in the next five days as the city’s hotel system reaches 95 per cent occupancy levels, HotelPlanner said.
More than 60 per cent of travellers were foreign visitors, it added.
“We’re hearing from hotel operators in London that they’ve experienced a surge in bookings since last Thursday’s announcement of the death of Her Majesty the Queen,” said UK Hospitality chief executive Kate Nicholls. “Demand is certain to remain high right up until next Monday’s state funeral.”
Accommodation is also under strain owing to block bookings for extra police and other key personnel for before, during and after the high-profile event.
A basic windowless basement room in Piccadilly Circus, central London, was available for £300 per night. And another similar room was £315 per night near Paddington railway station.
The Snoozebox hotel in Stratford, east London, offering no-frills windowless rooms made out of shipping containers, has no availability until after the funeral.
Standard hotel chains have also been inundated. More than a dozen hotels operated by Premier Inn owner Whitbread in the city centre were booked out, a search showed.
Travelodge, which has 78 hotels in the capital said it had seen a surge in booking from all corners of the UK.
Average prices for a return flight from the United States to London leaving on September 15, 16 and 17 were $1,120 (£975), $1,054 (£917) and $967 (£841), respectively, Hopper’s data showed. That compares with an average price for a transatlantic round trip of $710 (£617).
Increased travel as pandemic restrictions eased have boosted hotel rates to record levels this summer, data from analytics firm STR showed.
Britons also spent heavily on celebrations to commemorate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee over a four-day weekend in June.
A weaker pound is also attracting people from abroad and the influx may provide a boost to restaurants, pubs and museums still recovering from the pandemic and as record levels of inflation bite. It’s too early to estimate how big an impact it may have.
Most businesses will likely be shut on Monday, which has been declared a public holiday, limiting the benefit for the hospitality and tourism sector, said Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
Still, many will be able to make up for it, as most of them did in June after the extra holiday for the Jubilee and similar events in the past had minimal impact on consumers’ confidence and their spending decisions, he said.
For now, Pantheon is expecting a 0.2 per cent hit to September GDP levels from the funeral. (Agencies)