Both cities were amongst the best performing markets in Europe in December, achieving impressive year-on-year growth in gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR) by 38.6% and 34.2% respectively, according to the latest data from HotStats.

Amsterdam hotels achieved positive movements in 2014 across all key performance indicators with increases in occupancy (+1.6 percentage points) and average room rate (ARR) (+3.7%), contributing to a 5.8% rise in revenue per available room (RevPAR).

Additional revenue per available room from beverage (+8.1%), leisure (+5.1%) and food (+4.2%) enhanced total revenue per available room (TRevPAR) levels by 5.1% to €215.26.

Despite overheads per available room climbing by 0.9%, hoteliers managed to register a 10.6% increase in GOPPAR, representing a profit conversion of 40.2% for the year.

Hotels in the Belgian capital simultaneously increased occupancy (+2.0 percentage points) but at the cost of ARR declining by 0.9% in the year of 2014. A RevPAR surge of 1.9% combined with a general increase in other revenue streams helped to deliver the TRevPAR growth of 2.2% to €126.63 compared to the city’s 2013 results.

Despite overheads per available room escalating by 1.1%, payroll decreased by 1.2 percentage points, helping hoteliers to generate a departmental operating profit per available room (DOPPAR) and GOPPAR growth of 3.9% and 6.4% respectively.

Dry December in Barcelona and Zurich

December was a challenging month for hotels in Barcelona with a drop in both ARR (-2.1%) and RevPAR (-0.2%). Negative year-on-year comparisons in non-rooms departments mostly fuelled by revenue per available room from meeting room hire (-37.9%), beverage (-23.8%) and food (-23.1%) caused TRevPAR to decline by 12.1%, contributing to a GOPPAR decrease of 26.5% for the month.

However for 2014, the city’s results were much more positive with increases in all key performance indicators, as RevPAR, TRevPAR and GOPPAR levels went up by 3.6%, 4.7% and 7.8% respectively.

Zurich hoteliers experienced similar results with negative year-on-year movements across all key performance indicators in the month of December, yet the overall performance of 2014 was not deteriorated by these figures. RevPAR and TRevPAR grew respectively by 1.6% and 1.2% and despite payroll rising by 0.3 percentage points, GOPPAR surged by 2.2% compared to the same period last year.

St Petersburg profits pale

St Petersburg hotels grew RevPAR by 2.9% in the month of December, which together with additional increases in ancillary departmental revenues delivered a TRevPAR growth of 4.7%.

However, profit conversion diminished from 19.9% to 18.6% because overheads and payroll increased. As a result, GOPPAR fell by 2.1% to €12.55, demonstrating yet again the need to look beyond RevPAR to see the true performance picture.

Looking at the last twelve monthly results, the Russian city experienced negative year-on-year changes across all key performance indicators, with TRevPAR and GOPPAR falling by 12.3% and 26.3% respectively.