By Michael Jones.
The UK continues to lead Europe in hotel occupancy with four straight weeks above 60 percent in the metric, according to the latest data from hospitality research specialists STR through 18 July.
Thomas Emanuel, director, STR, said: “Demand is almost exclusively leisure-driven as the UK has benefitted from a successful vaccination programme, a phased reopening and improved travel sentiment overall. Other countries are showing improvement in recent weeks for those very same reasons, but this is still far from a normal summer in Europe.”
The UK’s highest weekly occupancy level, 63.5 percent, came 12-18 July, but that was still significantly lower than the occupancy achieved during the comparable week from July 2019, 84.5 percent. Also, during the week of 12-18 July, a handful of European countries showed continued week-over-week improvement in occupancy levels: Ireland (54.3 percent), Spain (53.7 percent), France (51.4 percent), Italy (51.1 percent), Poland (50.1 percent), Switzerland (44.0 percent), and the Netherlands (43.6 percent).
