Business travel remains buoyant but weekend occupancy levels dip, London hotels revenue per available room (revPAR) was down only 5% in July compared with 2004 figures, according to Daily HotelBenchmark by Deloitte.

Commenting on the month's results, Marvin Rust, Managing Partner of Hospitality at Deloitte said: "Critically, data for the last week of July showed that hoteliers had not cut rates in response to the bombings. In fact, rates increased by 6%, consistent with our expectation that the terrorist attacks would have a relatively short term effect on the London market.

"Weekend occupancy levels are proving the slowest to recover, with figures down by 11% last weekend (29/30 July). Rate increases of 3.5% mitigated the overall impact of this drop.

"There is a misconception that the tourism industry is most vulnerable to terrorist attacks. In reality GDP and exchange rates have a far greater impact on the industry. These results demonstrate the resilience of the London market and the continuing attraction of the city to visitors.

Our clients are reporting very few cancellations and this is supported by London hotels financial results for the month" Rust adds.

The HotelBenchmark Survey contains the largest independent source of hotel performance data outside of North America and tracks the performance of over 6,500 hotels and 1.2 million rooms every month.

Contact: 
Tina Wanstall
HotelBenchmark
E-mail: twanstall@deloitte.co.uk