Accor reports Q1 like-for-like revenue up 85%
French hospitality group Accor has reported revenue for the first quarter 2022 of €701m (£589.6m), up 85% like-for-like against the first quarter of 2021.
Europe was the region most impacted by the Omicron variant, but this was short-lived and remained limited to January: in March 2022, occupancy rates already exceeded their Q4 2021 levels.
In the UK, revenue per available room (revpar) was down 15% compared with Q1 2019. Similar to France, the recovery was driven by regional cities, which were almost back to their 2019 activity levels. The performance gap with London also started to close due to the pick-up in international visitors.
Based on reservation and price increase trends, the group predicted that revpar would continue to improve in the coming quarters.
Domestic demand was expected to return to 2019 levels by the end of the year, with recovery in international demand catching up.
Sébastien Bazin, chairman and chief executive of Accor, said: "Accor's performance in the first quarter of 2022 confirms the clear upturn in business across all regions and the renewed momentum in tourism, food services and entertainment. These results are notably driven by our market dynamics in Europe, the Middle East and the Americas as well as the strong demand for our luxury and lifestyle hotels, and domestic travel. Such underlying trends, combined with borders reopening give us confidence that our performance will continue to improve month after month, with prices already above 2019 level."
During the first quarter of 2022, Accor opened 26 hotels, representing about 3,700 rooms. At the end of March 2022, the group had a portfolio of 777,849 rooms (5,304 hotels) and a pipeline of about 212,000 rooms (1,212 hotels).
