COVID-19 webinar summary: 5 key points on Benelux hotel performance, 3 December

Knowing you might not have time to watch our full webinars, we are pleased to continue our series of COVID-19 webinar summaries. In this latest edition, we talk performance in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Rollercoaster ride

Despite experiencing a difficult year overall, with occupancy not surpassing 55% of the 2019 benchmark, some of the Benelux saw slightly better levels over the last three months.

Antwerp, for instance, recovered 74% of 2019 levels from August through October. However, markets like Amsterdam, Utrecht and Brussels are still below 55% of the 2019 comparable.

Slow going in the submarkets

Submarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg have seen slow occupancy improvement since January. For the week ending 14 November, Ghent’s absolute occupancy was 66.0%, which was the highest level among key submarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg. For comparison, Bruges saw just a 40.2%

Regional submarkets leading Netherlands occupancy

New partial restrictions in place from 13 November have affected the Netherlands’ occupancy recovery. While regional submarkets surpassed 50% occupancy for the week ending 14 November, Maastricht and The Hague saw levels of just 44.0% and 49.2%, respectively.

Amsterdam’s occupancy for the week was 50.0%.

Weekday hotel occupancy far behind 2019 levels

Due to the lack of business and MICE demand during the week and the lack of events, especially in Amsterdam, weekday hotel occupancy in the Benelux is still far behind 2019 levels. The decreasing trend that started in November is expected through December as some countries have reimplemented restrictions around travel.

For the week ending 14 November, Rotterdam Area, however, had recovered 71.2%, the highest recovery level among key markets in Benelux.

A look ahead

Looking ahead, Antwerp appears strong with occupancy on the books reaching almost 70% by mid-December as well as a spike in mid-February.

Amsterdam still does have bookings for Christmas, but there is likely to be more movement there depending on current restrictions and when they are eased.

Powered by Forward STAR data, the below image includes bookings pickups for the next 90 days as of 15 November, and further insights are provided in the full webinar recording. Business-on-the-books intelligence will help us all understand recovery and provide much-needed context. Those insights can be accessed for free when you submit your data. If you are interested, please email sales@str.com.

For further insights into COVID-19’s impact on global hotel performance, visit our content hub.