There is still one week before the May Day holiday. As tourism products from all over the world enter the "sprint" stage, the prices of hotels in many places will also rise.
The Paper search found that the prices of hotels near popular scenic spots in tourist cities all over the country were 2-3 times higher than usual three days before the May Day holiday, and even the hotel prices rose five times, which made people call them "hotel assassins".
Take the hotel near Guanqian Street in Suzhou as an example. The lowest check-in price of a hotel chain with a weekday minimum price of about 350 yuan/night is 1,204 yuan/night on April 29th, which is 3.44 times of the weekday price. The check-in price on April 30 is 1381 yuan/night, which is about 3.9 times of the usual price.
The lowest room rate of Atlantis Sanya Hotel on weekdays in April and May is 2488 yuan/night. At present, the lowest room rate available on April 29th is 6188 yuan/night, and the lowest room rate on April 30th and May 1st is 8388 yuan/night.
However, The Paper found that up to now, the cheapest sea-view twin rooms and sea-view queen rooms in Atlantis, Sanya have been booked from April 28th to May 3rd, and the lowest room price of Royal Club sea-view twin rooms on April 29th is 6,188 yuan/night, and the lowest room price on weekdays is 3,288 yuan/night.
It is worth mentioning that The Paper search found that up to now, there are 10 types of rooms in Sanya Atlantis from April 28th to May 3rd, which have been fully booked, including the Royal Suite and Poseidon Underwater Suite with a price of 108,888 yuan/night, but the weekday price of these two types of rooms is also 108,888 yuan/night.
A four-diamond hotel in Jingdezhen seems to have a bigger price difference between the May Day holiday and weekdays. The Paper search found that the hotel can book a room in 300 yuan/night on weekdays in April and May, and even the lowest room price in 300 yuan in the week before May Day was less than 281 yuan/night, while the lowest room price from April 29th to May 1st was only 2198 yuan.
The Paper found that the room type of the hotel with a price of 281 yuan on weekdays was 1108 yuan/night on April 28, which was 3.9 times the usual price; The check-in price on April 29th is 2198 yuan/night, which is 7.8 times of the usual price. If you check in on April 30, the room has been sold out, and the price shows 3140 yuan/night, which is 11 times the usual price. In addition, 8 rooms in the hotel that stayed on the evening of April 30th have been booked.
According to the data obtained by The Paper from an online travel platform, from April 29th to May 3rd this year, the average hotel payment price in most popular tourist cities exceeded the same period in 2019. Among them, the average payment price of hotels in Beijing, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Shanghai and Jinan exceeded 25% of the May 1 holiday in 2019.
Some industry analysts who did not want to be named told The Paper that the general increase in hotel prices during the May Day holiday this year can be explained from two aspects: first, on the supply side, after three years of epidemic, the domestic hotel supply has been greatly reduced. According to the statistics of China Hotel Association, by the beginning of 2022, the number of domestic hotels had decreased by about 86,000, or about 25%, and the total number of rooms had decreased by about 470,000, or about 24.7%.
Secondly, since the beginning of this year, the domestic demand for business travel and tourism has recovered beyond expectations (the average daily passenger flow of railways in March has surpassed that in the same period of 2019), and the number of tourists in several tourist cities in the first quarter exceeded that in the same period of 2019. Compared with the rapid rebound of the demand side, the repair of the supply side takes a relatively long period, and the centralized release of the demand for travel during the May 1 holiday has aggravated the current problem of insufficient supply, especially the serious shortage of accommodation facilities in popular tourist destinations, and the price increase is inevitable.
However, the person said that there is no need to worry too much about hotel prices. "Stimulated by the rapid recovery of demand, the hotel supply is also recovering rapidly. The opening volume of domestic high-end hotels in the first quarter has doubled, and major wine management groups are also working hard to seize high-quality properties. The number of stores opened is increasing every month." Analysts in the industry predict that the domestic accommodation industry will basically return to a state of balance between supply and demand in the second half of the year, and hotel prices are also expected to end the violent fluctuation and basically return to normal levels.
On the other hand, judging from the increase in the price of May Day compared with the usual price (hereinafter referred to as "price coefficient"), the price coefficient of most popular destinations this year is not higher than that of May Day in 2019.
According to the data from an online travel platform in The Paper, the price coefficients of 12 popular destinations in May Day this year, including Wuxi, Changzhou, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Shaoxing, Xi ‘an and Beijing, are all lower than those in May Day in 2019. That is to say, the price increase in these cities this year is lower than that in May Day in 2019. In addition, the price coefficients of Shanghai, Dali, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Zhuhai, Hangzhou and other places are basically the same as those of May Day in 2019.
Judging from the overall price of hotels since the beginning of this year, the above analysts pointed out that although the average price of domestic star-rated hotels has increased relatively year-on-year, it is mainly affected by the low cardinal utility in the same period in 2022. Compared with the same period in 2019 before the epidemic, the average price of hotels can basically be considered as returning to the normal price level.
"Take five-star hotels as an example. In 2022, the average house price of domestic five-star hotels was only 509.33 yuan, down 8% year-on-year and down more than 15% compared with the same period in 2019. During the epidemic, the pre-sale prices of five-star hotels in some popular tourist destinations once appeared ‘ Cabbage price ’ The average price per night is even lower than that of three-star and four-star hotels before the epidemic. " The person said.