South Africa’s tourist-accommodation businesses clocked up a 7.6 per cent rise in income during May compared with the same month a year earlier.
Within that figure, income from accommodation alone, excluding meals and other items, showed a 10.3 per cent increase, with guest houses and guest-farms leading the way, reporting a 27.3 per cent increase.
Caravan parks and camping sites saw their income from accommodation rise by 17.9 per cent, “other accommodation” by 15.2 per cent and hotels by a relatively-modest 6.9 per cent.
But because of the greater “weighting” given to the hotel business in the statistics, it played the biggest part in the 10.3 per cent rise, accounting for 4.7 percentage points, while “other accommodation” contributed 3.8 percentage points.
The figures are in current prices, taking no account of the effects of inflation. But the key numbers all show real-terms rises even when the 6.6 per cent inflation rate in the year to May is factored in.
Helping the rise in income may have been a small decline of 0.3 per cent in the number of available “stay units” – such as hotel rooms – in May compared with a year earlier. There was a 7.5 per cent rise in the number of “stay units” sold in May compared with a year earlier.
Income “per stay unit night sold” – earnings from bar and restaurant sales, for example, and from other sales – rose by just 2.6 per cent in May compared with a year earlier. When bar and restaurant sales are looked at on their own, the picture varied, depending on the type of accommodation.
Thus May saw a 4.5 per cent rise in income from bar and restaurant sales compared with a year earlier, while “other accommodation” saw a 14.9 per cent decline. Caravan parks and camping sites saw such sales shoot up by 57.1 per cent compared with May 2013, while guest houses and guest farms experienced a 17.4 per cent rise.
Looking at the three months to the end of May, income from just accommodation was 11 per cent higher than in the three months to the end of May last year, with an 8.6 per cent increase for hotels contributing 5.6 percentage points of the rise and one of 12.7 per cent for “other accommodation,” contributing 3.5 percentage points.
Source: Investec
