THE average price of a hotel room in Asia climbed two per cent in 2012 to 109 points on the Hotel Price Index (HPI), lagging behind the global growth average and a far cry from its 2007 HPI ranking of 131.
According to Hotels.com’s Hotel Price Index (HPI) Full Year 2012, hotel room prices across the world grew an average of three per cent last year. The Caribbean boasted the highest increase of six per cent, North America expanded five per cent and the Pacific gained four per cent.
The HPI looks at prices that guests paid for their hotel rooms.
Asia saw prices fluctuate during 2012 due to the fall of the Indian rupee, travel affected by territorial disputes involving China, Japan’s steady recovery from the March 2011 earthquake and flooding in Thailand.
However, Puerto Princesa in the Philippines bucked the trend by displaying 92 per cent growth in hotel prices. The country on the whole welcomed over four million arrivals in 2012 and other hotspots within the country such as Boracay have also seen hotel rates rise with the tide.
Nevertheless, Asia’s 2012 performance was more robust than in 2011 when prices fell due to Japan’s March 11 earthquake.
As hotel guests, Japanese nationals were the top spending market in the US with an average of US$209 per night going towards accommodation last year. The Japanese also came in first for international accommodation, at US$186 per night or a five per cent year-on-year increase.
But for domestic travel, Singaporeans and Australians were some of the most generous, splurging US$187 and US$178 respectively.
