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Room Occupancy Stats


mike.m

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Hi everyone ,

      Just wondered if anyone has access to any stats for average annual room occupancy figures for (in our case ) a three bed chambres d'hote ? Obviously huge regional variations but if we could establish a national/ regional  norm it would give us some idea of how we are doing . Not affiliated to Gde F so not aware if they produce anything for their members .

 Thanks for any thoughts ![:D]

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We are affiliated with GdF & have been open now for 5 years - when we started we were told by the lady who inspects to expect occupancy for a 3 epi 4 roomed chambres d'hote in our region (Charente) to be in the region of 25% across the whole year with 75-100% occupancy between 14th July & end of August.  The last 3 years we have had approximately 33% across the year as a whole - this year we were 100% from late June to late September, but it was pretty quiet in the first 2 quarters & this one is looking to be our quietest of the year so far, so guess it will equal out to about 35% for the year as a whole.   Am sure Quillan will come up with some statistics for you - he is the expert on such matters, but a lot depends on where you are, local attractions & length of season etc.... 31% seems to be a good average figure to aim for.

We also have gites & again local guide lines from GdF is 14 weeks/gite/year, so far we have always had in excess of 19 weeks/gite/season which for our gites is 1st May-31st Oct

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My Stats are as follows for the last 6 years (we never kept any for the first year). The percentage is based on the months we were actually open and is the average of all those months. I have included till the end of this month with reservations on the books but does not include passing trade or reservations that we may get for the rest of the month.

2003 - 20.79%

2004 - 32.24%

2005 - 32.25%

2006 - 40.08%

2007 - 57.67%

2008 - 49.25%

I think the 31% figure is about right based on 12 months, the question is do you want to be open for 12 months, can you get 12 months worth of business? The real magic figure is for July, August and September and that should be a minimum of 70% occupancy for those three months. If it is not then you need to look at your advertising.

As said these figures depend on many things, many of which are unique to a particular CDH (location etc) and should not really be used as a general guide. My figures are correct but I know of others, local to me, who 'claim' to have at least 10% more occupancy than me. I am not claiming I get all the trade but an extra 10% on my figures is actually quite a lot of extra bookings outside of high season especially when you take in to account the amount of CDH's springing up all over our area (there was just us in 2002/2003 an now there are eight all within 4km) which dilutes the amount of  reservations you should expect.

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Most of the sites that come up when you use the link are either GDF, Clevacances or the Departmental tourist office. The problem with this, and probably why Cassis has said "take them with a pinch of salt" is that only once have we ever been asked for any figures and I rather suspect I am not alone.

The other thing is that in each case it only represents the information gathered by that particular agency. You might like to assume, a dangerous thing to do, that the Tourist Offices might have better information as they would typically combine GDF and Clevacances figures but then what about the thousands out there that are not members of either.

You should also consider that some owners are only 'officially' open for six months. This enables them to drop their Chambers of Commerce membership for the other six months thus saving six months of cotistations. Therefore of course their average occupancy will be only over six months, the summer, and does not reflect a true annual figure.

I still think the best way of getting an average income figure, if thats what you are looking for, is to multiply the maximum daily income from every room by twelve weeks. Anything you make on top of the figure you come to should be considered a bonus.

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It also makes it pretty difficult to interpret results if the data are based on the number of months open and you don't know which months are included.  Another reason I take the figures with a pinch of salt is that I don't trust some owners to have given the correct figures - either deliberately or accidentally.  If you'd met some of the owners near us you'd know why!  When I get the annual report from our GdF office it always seems, judging from the occupancy rates quoted, that we're the only successful B&B around here, which I know is not true.

But it's all pretty academic, anyway - the important thing is how many nights do you, personally, need to fill in order to have a going concern, if it's a significant part of your income.  What others are doing may be interesting, but is not quite so important as paying the bills.

If I could double our room prices and get half our current occupancy rate I'd be happy - same dosh for half the work would be nice! [:D]

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