Hotel occupancy hits year-to-date high in September, still shy of pre-pandemic levels: STB

HOTEL occupancies and revenue per available room (RevPAR) were at their highest all year in September, Singapore Tourism Board (STB) data showed.

The latest uptick took overall hotel industry room revenue to S$79.1 million, up from S$68.6 million in August.

International arrivals rose by 19.7 per cent month on month to 19,000 travellers - led by mainland China, which sent 8,950 visitors in September, against 8,900 in August.

Travellers from Germany rose to 769 in September, from 139 the month prior, after the launch of a quarantine-free scheme for fully vaccinated arrivals from Germany on Sep 8. Singapore has since announced vaccinated travel lanes, or VTLs, with 13 countries in all.

There was also a month-on-month rise in arrivals from places that had been key source markets before the pandemic, such as Malaysia, Japan, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia and South Korea.

Hotel occupancy hit 63 per cent in September, the highest all year, from 55 per cent in the month before.  RevPAR  jumped to a high of S$103.18, against S$81.86 in August.

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Average room rates rose month on month to S$163.60 in September, from S$147.90 previously, though this was still below the year's peak of S$167.30 in April. The monthly improvements were recorded across all hotel tiers: economy, mid-tier, upscale and luxury.

But industry metrics are still well short of their pre-pandemic levels. Occupancy was 87 per cent in September 2019, while RevPAR at the time was S$205.07.

For the nine months, average occupancy in Singapore's hotel sector was 49.9 per cent, compared with 57.1 per cent in the same period in 2020.

RevPAR was down by 11.9 per cent year on year, at S$76.70, and overall room revenue was down 34.2 per cent, to S$644.4 million.

International arrivals were lower by 93.6 per cent year on year, at 172,060 travellers for the nine months - which paled against 14.33 million in the first three quarters of 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Lee Ju Ye, economist at Maybank Kim Eng, called the pick-up in September visitor arrivals “very small”, as Brunei and Germany - the only countries with VTLs at the time - “accounted for insignificant shares of Singapore’s arrivals pre-pandemic”. Indeed, visitor arrivals were still below the levels in March and April this year, before the explosion of Delta-variant infections worldwide.

Despite Singapore’s expansion of VTLs to more countries, Lee told The Business Times that “we do not expect a sudden influx” of travellers, since cases in Singapore remain high, social restrictions remain in place, and places such as Germany and the United States have classified Singapore as a high-risk location.

“China’s tight outbound travel restrictions will likely keep arrivals low into next year,” she warned, although she added that a relaxation of travel restrictions with neighbouring Indonesia and Malaysia “would provide a much-needed boost, if completed by year-end”.

The STB defines international visitors as people who spend less than a year in Singapore. It excludes returning citizens and permanent residents and pass holders, Malaysians arriving by land, non-resident air and sea crew, and air-transit passengers.