Willemstad, February 26, 2020– Despite the different developments and general growth within the tourism sector, Curaçao has experienced a decrease in hotel occupancy in January 2020.
Hotel occupancy in the month of January 2020 was 74.7%. This signifies a decrease of 5.4 percentage points compared to last year January 2019, which showed a hotel occupancy of 80.1%.
The Average Daily Rate (ADR) also experienced a decrease in comparison to 2019, from $210.75 to $191.03 in 2020. Regarding the Revenue per Available Room (RevPar), the numbers have indicated a decrease of 15.8%, with the RevPar being $142.07 in 2020 and $168.73 in 2019.
The Caribbean figures, as a whole, indicate a steady increase of 3.5% since 2009. However, even though the Caribbean had experienced a constant flow of passenger flights to different destinations, countries such as St. Maarten, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Cancun had all been affected in 2019; due to reasons such as natural disasters and other factors. Consequentially, this results in visitors considering other destinations, which causes the entire Caribbean region to experience a decrease in visitors.
Considering the increase in hotel rooms in Curaçao since 2019, and in 2020, CHATA predicted a stable hotel performance. Nevertheless, the current imbalance between supply and demand of hotel rooms sets an immense pressure on the hotel market. Curaçao’s supply of hotel rooms is increasing quicker than the demand.
Along with this pressure, comes a pricing competition seeing that the supply of rooms is not in balance with the demand, consequently, this leads to the visitor having more options.
CHATA is pleased with the different developments within the sector and confirms the general growth within the industry. Nevertheless, it is important to continue investing in creating demand and flights, with destination to Curaçao, to improve our sector. A price war isn’t healthy nor is it long lasting for the industry. Therefore, it is imperative to focus on stimulating demand by bringing more visitors to our island, which means more flights to Curaçao to balance the supply and demand of the present and the future.
The figures on hotel occupancy mentioned above were based on 15 hotels, that represent around 3400 rooms on our island. For more information, visit our website www.chata-data.com