Accor reports big drop in sales

European hotel giant Accor has reported an 8.4% drop in sales in the third quarter of this year. The hotel also said its revenues dropped 10.4% in the same period.

The tough economic times have spelt trouble for most in the travel sector, with airlines cutting capacities and slapping every imaginable add-on fee to ticket prices to help recoup some of their losses. The hotel industry in the UK has also suffered, with London hotel room-rates now significantly lower than they have been in years.

The slow down in travel has been a global phenomenon, and Europe has not been spared. Accor has reported that its total sales figures for this last quarter touched 1.85 billion euros: 8.4% lower than for the same period last year. An 8.9% drop in turnover was recorded for the first nine months of this year, when compared to the same period in 2008. This year’s turnover figure read 5.29 billion euros. Hotel revenue for this period also dropped 10.7% when compared to the first nine months of last year.

Jacques Stern, senior executive vice president for Accor has indicated the hotel group is not expecting an upturn on its activity in the near future, certainly not as early at the first quarter of 2010. Stern has said there has been an increase in enquiries for conferences and seminars in this last quarter, but not many of these actually translated into bookings.

Business travel has been one of the hardest hit sectors, and as this has been a traditional profit-earner for many travel businesses, the absence of the business traveller has been felt strongly on the books across the travel industry.