U.K. hotel occupancy was 35.5 percentage points higher than holiday rental occupancy during 2017. However, both accommodation types saw similar moderate growth in occupancy over the last three years.
HENDERSONVILLE, TENNESSEE, and LONDON — Holiday rentals in the United Kingdom showed lower occupancy, higher prices and different seasonal trends than hotels in the market, according to a STR analysis of SuperControl proprietary data.
The analysis, conducted to provide a high-level understanding of the lodging landscape in the U.K., compares three years of market-level data (2015-17) from STR’s industry leading hotel performance database with holiday rental data from SuperControl’s booking and management software. While SuperControl provided STR with property-level performance data for its entire U.K. portfolio of more than 12,000 properties, STR chose to limit its analysis to rentals with four or fewer bedrooms to provide a more relevant comparison with hotel rooms. STR was not remunerated in any way for its analysis, and its participation in this analysis was not contingent upon developing or reporting predetermined results. Additionally, this analysis may not be fully representative of the wider U.K. holiday rental market.
Key findings from the analysis include:
- U.K. hotel occupancy was 35.5 percentage points higher than holiday rental occupancy during 2017. However, both accommodation types saw similar moderate growth in occupancy over the last three years.
- Conversely, U.K. holiday rental rates were 25% higher than hotel average daily rate in 2017. This is a result of holiday rentals offering more bedrooms than hotels.
- Holiday rental demand is heavily leisure-oriented, while hotels show a mix of business and leisure demand.
As a result of the leisure nature of its demand, seasonality disproportionately affects the holiday rental sector. – Low season for holiday rentals occurs during the winter months when occupancy ranges from 20% to 30%, while the highest periods of demand correspond with holiday and school breaks.
“STR has previously conducted research using data from Airbnb on the newer, urban rental segment of the home rental sector,” said Robert Bauer, STR’s senior analyst. “However, with this analysis, we wanted to focus on traditional holiday rentals in leisure areas to understand how they operate in comparison with hotels. What we found is that hotels greatly outpace traditional holiday rentals when it comes to occupancy. On the other hand, holiday rental ADR is higher than hotels due to larger unit size and expanded product offerings.”
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