Dublin hotels had the highest occupancy in Europe in 2016 and are forecast to stay on top in 2017 and 2018, according to PwC ‘s European cities’ hotel forecast 2017 and 2018.
The report found that hotel occupancy in Dublin was higher than London, Amsterdam, and Berlin within the same period. Dublin’s average daily room rate ranked ninth most expensive in Europe at €128.This average is expected to reach €138 in 2017 and even further to €147 in 2018.
The report showed that Geneva and Zurich in Switzerland had the highest average daily rate on the continent. The most expensive city is Geneva at €300, followed by Zurich at €245 and Paris at €229. PwC said while security concerns saw mixed fortunes for some city destinations in 2016, overall it was another record-breaking year for European tourism with 12m more visitors and almost 3bn nights spent in tourist accommodation.
Dublin Airport had a record-breaking 28m passengers in 2016, which exceeded the 2015 record by more than 2.8m. The report found that European hotel deal activity did see a slow down of nearly nearly 10% from the record high of €21bn in 2015 to €19bn in 2016, still the second-highest level ever recorded. The drop was largely driven by a slowdown in transaction volumes in the UK which fell by over 60%, due to Brexit uncertainty.
