PHILADELPHIA-Center City hotel occupancy for the months of June, July and August rose 6% this year, compared with the same three months a year ago, according to PKF Consulting. The average daily room rate jumped 8.5% in the same comparison.
Peter Tyson, SVP in the local PKF office, tells GlobeSt.com both increases are “very strong” in comparison with previous summers. He gives partial credit to “Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” an exhibit at the Franklin Institute. During its entire run, from February through September, the exhibit attracted nearly 1.3 million visitors, a 30% increase over initial projections. “It was a nice plus,” Tyson says, adding that “there were also a lot more group room nights from conventions and meetings.”
Ed Grose, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, confirms both. He tells GlobeSt.com the King Tut exhibit “accounted for more than 25,000 room nights during its first four months alone. The number for the full run will be higher, once the data is in. We also had good pops over the three summer holiday weekends, which are generally slow,” he says. “There were conventions here over Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day.”
The three summer conventions alone filled more than 95,000 hotel rooms, according to Jack Ferguson, EVP of conventions at the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau. Meetings and conventions typically account for 40% of total hotel rooms each year. This summer, these attendees accounted for 246,338 total hotel room nights, according to PCVB.
Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. reports that leisure travelers account for 75% of all visitors to the Philadelphia region. During this July and August, its website had more than 1.2 million visits, the highest traffic ever, up 30% compared with the same two months of 2006.
The average hotel occupancy for this year's three summer months was 81.5%, compared with 76.9% for the same months of 2006. The average daily room rate this summer was $164.82, up from the previous average of $151.87, according to PKF data. This summer 764,000 rooms were filled, compared with 714,000 the previous summer, and room supply was up just 1%, Tyson says, because a few properties were being renovated during summer 2006.
Even with daily rate increases here, “Philadelphia is a great value, compared with New York, Boston and Washington, DC,” Grose points out. He puts the average daily rates in those cities at $281, $208 and $190, respectively.
The outlook for coming summers also looks good. While several new Center City hotel projects are underway, just one–a 97-room property–will open before 2009 and 2010, according to Tyson. “Some of the new hotels may open slightly ahead of completion of the convention center expansion,” he says, “so at that time there may be a few anxious months when properties are looking for heads for beds.”
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