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Summer 2015 in comparison: St. Petersburg vs. other European city break destinations

St. Petersburg, 06 October, 2015 – Tatiana Veller, Head of JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group, Russia & CIS, comments on operational performance of quality hotels  in St. Petersburg:

   “St. Petersburg was named a Top European Travel Destination at the World Travel Awards in September 2015. Many other factors came together this year to lead the city’s hospitality industry to a record-breaking summer. Late dates of the International Economic Forum, combined with the usual seasonal effect of the ‘White Nights’, rise in domestic travel, and the growing buying power of hard currencies against the ruble propelled the hotel performance to the new heights.

   This year the luxury segment performed at its best in 10-year retrospective (since 2006): compared to 2014, it displayed a 28% growth in occupancy to almost 78%, and an extreme (81%) gain in ADR (to almost RUB 19,500, topping the Moscow’s rate in the same segment), which together led to an over 130% growth in RevPAR (reaching, in absolute numbers, just above RUB 15,000).

   The most moderate performance improvements were recorded in the Midscale sector, where notwithstanding a marginal drop in rates, with improved occupancy RevPAR still grew by 9% (to reach approximately RUB 2,500). An absolute leader in terms of occupancy was the Upscale segment, where about 90% of rooms available in the monitored hotels, where occupied.

   St. Petersburg, also known to international tourists as a ‘Northern Venice’, quite obviously competes for attention with other European destinations where leisure tourism is the large component in arrivals. It’s a city very convenient for a long weekend trip (so-called ‘City Break’) for most EMEA travelers, easily accessible by Air, Rail and Boat. So, we compared how it performed against similar markets (bearing in mind that in USD terms all Russian cities were disadvantaged when it comes to reporting rates).

   St. Petersburg’s performance this summer was most closely comparable to Istanbul’s in terms of rate (USD 149 vs. USD 157) and even trumped that market in Occupancy, also exceeding Rome’s indicator and being at par with Amsterdam. So, it’s clear that the most popular tourist destination in Russia laid a solid foundation this year to position itself for future growth in performance. More tourists then eve familiarized themselves with the city, and if the hoteliers manage to build the rates up gradually in the future, this market can be expected to do rather well in years to come.

   We can’t say, though, that this summer the market broke any records in historic perspective. The occupancy was quite typical for the peak season. The usual question of mitigating the seasonality in demand for the owners and operators of St.-Petersburg Hoteliers remains, there is still a large fork of 35-40 p.p. in occupancy of St. Petersburg hotels between the best and the worst months of the year. The hope is that the current initiatives of promoting the city as a MICE destination will help. The further boost to the city’s income from tourism infrastructure could be delivered by adopting a special ‘weekend visa-free’ regime, similar to what’s currently offered to the tourists arriving by cruise boats.”