Global Hotel Market Sentiment Survey has been designed to provide the hotel industry with a quick assessment of the future market outlook.

The four-question survey focuses on the outlook for occupancy, average room rate and total revenue. Hoteliers have also been asked to make comments on their expectations for the coming year in comparison to 2011, as well as identify key factors of growth/decline, assessing the outlook for key demand segments.

This report summarizes the outcome, gathered from responses across 43 countries. Of the 1,954 respondents, 52 percent of them came from Europe followed by Asia (36 percent), the Americas (6 percent), the Middle East and Africa (4 percent), while Oceania represented 2 percent.

Sentiment has again moved north recovering from a second half slump in 2011, although as the European figures are almost completely flat, it was an increase in positive sentiment in the USA and the Middle East that have contributed the most.

Sentiment Rankings

As a way to measure and compare the results across global regions and countries, we have created an index to formulate an overall average sentiment score from the first two questions. Points are assigned to each corresponding response and compounded accordingly.

The index utilizes a scale of negative 150 to positive 150 in which a score of negative 150 denotes a sentiment of absolute pessimism; a zero score indicates unchanged expectations from the previous year whereas a positive 150 signifies a very optimistic outlook. The sentiment index or scores allow trends to be observed over time.

The outlook for 2012 is not as positive as the corresponding outlook in February 2011, however, has improved from the July 2011 survey.  Improving sentiment is observed in Asia, the Americas and the Middle-East and Africa, while Europe remains low and Oceania has slightly declined.

In Europe, with the debt crisis continuing to cloud the horizon, most key markets such as the UK, France and Italy posted declines in their sentiment score; however, other markets such as the Ireland, Hungary, Russia and Germany have seen a positive increase in sentiment.

Looking at individual countries, of those with the largest number of responses, Indonesia recorded the highest sentiment score of 53, followed by South Africa at 41.  South African sentiment has improved considerably following 18 months of low scores. China dropped to third with a score of 38 as the economy slows. Japan, coming in at fifth also has seen sentiment rise significantly (32) following the disastrous year of 2011.

Italy was one of the lowest scoring nations (-35) indicating the seriousness of the economic situation in many European countries.

Full report:

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