According to STR Global, the compilers of worldwide hotel data, this is the number of hotel rooms that will open in Europe during 2011. That amounts to 747 new hotels but what’s that considering the size of Europe? The interest is in where the expansion is happening.
If you were asked to guess which city would have the largest number of hotels being built, your first thought would probably be London. No. It’s Birmingham. An extra 1,941 rooms are due to be opened this year alone raising the number of rooms available by a whopping 20%. Has Birmingham not had enough hotels before? Is there a sudden surge of interest in people wanting to go here? What has Birmingham suddenly got to offer that justifies all this extra hotel accommodation? Whatever it is, hoteliers have a huge amount of confidence in the city to invest so much.
But if Birmingham leads you might think, surely one of the big continental cities would be next? Or London? Neither. Manchester is next followed by Glasgow. Manchester has more rooms than Birmingham has but it will still grow by a further 2,291 rooms this year, a growth of nearly 19%. And Glasgow gains an extra 1,224 rooms to give growth of about 17%.
Moscow comes fourth with a further 4,836 but it is another British city that rounds off the top 5. Edinburgh has 1,135 rooms in the pipeline to give it an 11% increase over 2010.
Worldwide, it is in Asia where there is the greatest growth. Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia all have growth above 20%. China doesn’t manage that but it does have an astonishing 160,799 rooms being constructed.
This tells us that hoteliers expect more of us to travel and to be confident enough to book holidays.