Hotels: going from a bull market to collapse: report

In 2019, we observed a boom in the hotel market not yet recorded in the history of our country, experts from Emmerson Evaluation indicate in the latest report 'The hotel and condo-hotel market in Poland'. Numerous openings enriched the domestic base, which translated into an increase in the supply of rooms and beds. Demand kept pace with it – in most voivodships a statistical increase in the rate of hotel room utilization was noted.

There were more and more tourists – over 1.4 million more people decided to stay in domestic hotels than a year before (increase by almost 7 percent y/y). The chances for another successful year and the expansion of the national facilities base, however, were wasted by the outbreak of a pandemic.

According to data from the Central Statistical Office, in mid-2019, there were 2,635 categorized hotels in Poland with approx. 286,000 beds. New facilities were built in eleven voivodships. Considering the number of beds in Poland, the accommodation base increased by 4.5 percent y/y in the first half of last year, indicates Emmerson Evaluation.

The company's report showed that the largest increase in terms of the number of rooms compared to 2018 was in Poznań, where the supply increased by 10.8 percent. New global brand facilities have appeared here, such as Hampton by Hilton and Ibis Poznań Centrum hotels.

A high increase in the number of hotel rooms was also recorded in the Tri-City (9.4 percent y/y) and resulted, among others, from from the launch of the four-star Holiday Inn City Center and Radisson Hotel & Suites located on Wyspa Spichrzów and the three-star Platan Hotel located on the outskirts of Gdańsk. The listed facilities offered a total of 618 hotel rooms.

Warsaw, as the third city in the ranking, recorded in 2019 an increase in the number of hotel rooms at 6.8 percent y/y. Among them were Four Points by Sheraton Warsaw, Vienna House Mokotów Warsaw and Moxy by Marriott Koneser. The facilities offered a total of about 500 hotel rooms.

“The times of prosperity are over. Currently, the entire hotel market is facing a huge challenge. Some of the facilities, especially those that were poorly managed or had a lower standard of services or equipment from analogously categorized competitors, will certainly have difficulty staying on the market,” Dariusz Książak, Emmerson Evaluation President, emphasized.

In his opinion, we definitely have to reckon with bankruptcies in this industry much more frequently than before.

(WBJ)