Tokyo presented highest room rates in 2015: HRS Annual Asia Pacific Hotel Price Radar

SINGAPORE – Tokyo, Sydney, Singapore and Melbourne are rated as the cities with most expensive average hotel room rates in 2015 in Asia Pacific, according to corporate hotel

solutions provider, HRS. Based on data collected from all hotel bookings made via the HRS hotel portal in 2015, the analysis looks at per night hotel room rates and is indicative of where companies are channeling their corporate travel budgets.

 

HRS’ analysis also revealed that business travel remained largely unaffected by terrorist scares and environmental crisis. 
 

Commenting on the HRS Annual Price Radar, Todd Arthur, Managing Director APAC at HRS said, “The rise in business-related travel drive hotel rooms demand, and cities with the top hotel room rates indicates the business hotspots within the APAC region. Hotel room rates increases are driven by higher levels of business confidence, and our findings are synonymous with the GBTA Foundation’s prediction of global business travel spending to increase 6.5-percentage points over 2014.”

 

Tokyo takes the top spot from Melbourne with rates an average of SGD269 a night – a rise of 30.30-percentage points from the previous year – the biggest gain among cities in the top spots. The Abenomics-led economy slipped in the final months of 2015, but Tokyo continues to uphold a strong footing as a MICE destination by being a leading force for research and development in industries ranging from engineering, pharmaceuticals to robotics. The appeal of these strengths, coupled with Tokyo’s thrust back in the spotlight as the host of the 2020 Olympic Games, may be a contributing factor of the surge in the city’s room rates. 
 

The year saw a significant drop in hotel room rates in Melbourne, Australia despite it sporting one of the most expensive average room rates per night in the region. The city’s increase in room rates in 2014 was due to developing MICE offerings, but the growth hit a ceiling after a year. As the secondcostliest Australian city, Melbourne ranks closely behind Sydney, where rooms set business travelers back SGD266 a night. 
 

Meanwhile, whilst the bombings in Bangkok had some impact on the level of leisure travel, the city witnessed a 31-percentage points increase in room rates in 2015 compared to the year before. Beijing also showed a 22.2-percentage points increase in rates, despite seeing the first red-alert being issued under its four-tier alert system during the city’s smog crisis late 2015. This, however, is not anticipated to continue as strongly into 2016 with China’s current economic woes.
 

Hotel room rates in cities such as Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney remained fairly stable with less than a 10-percentage points change over 2014.