When Vacation Markets Slump
They say that timing is everything and for once I guessed right, 2009 was a good year to leave an insane business in a big city and start a new Internet Marketing consulting business, moving the family, lock, stock and dog to a small town. I can safely say I am glad to be gone from the likes of Wyndham, Hilton Hotel Corp. in Scottsdale, and working in the hotel business in general. Not that there is anything wrong with those particular brands, they are all equally screwed up!
I don't know about the rest of the country's resort destinations but I do know the Scottsdale market and they are down considerably over 2008. According to the Arizona Republic's December 25th article Travel slump hurts Scottsdale hotels Scottsdale's hospitality industry continued to struggle in October with a 23 percent decline in revenue per available room from a year ago, according to Smith Travel Research.
Ouch! This means that hoteliers (us poor sales slobs) filled only 61.4 percent of their rooms, not a good number and not good news for hotel management companies who have to answer to investors . On top of that bad news they posted a miserable $136.79. average room rate, down over 21%!
Revenue per available room, which combines occupancy and average room rate, was $83.97. Basically what this all means is that in spite of a horrible travel slump, of the kind never seen before, the bull-whips come out and sales has to come through. I wish them all the luck in the world, I did it for 25 years and I am done!
Is there such a thing we wondered? Check out these 15 trips we found in an article in Travel+Leisure (Nov 09) that, according to them, have the potential to "transform travelers and destinations alike."