Yes… At least for 6 out of 10 people that think hotel prices in France are too expensive or even unreasonable.
In a general way, everything is often too expensive and the hotel business is no exception ; this is the conclusion of a study done by Coach Omnium, a study company specialized in hotel business and tourism. This study was led in June 2010 on 1088 hotel clients from France and abroad.
60% of people think hotels are too expensive… why not. But the study gets strange is when we analyze the results with the same study from 2008. Then, 42% of the clients thought the same hotels where too expensive when during that time, according to Insee, the prices of these hotels “only” went up 0.9%.
Of course, the crisis came and the purchasing power also went down… but not only. The 0.9% raise, Insee points out, refers to the displayed rate for a hotel room (or public prices, or rack rate), meaning the price displayed on the facade of the hotel and which is rarely the price paid by the customers. Yet, according to the study of Coach Omnium, it seems the discounts (promotional prices) for hotels booked on the internet are not as important as they used to be. Basically, this means public prices for a hotel room didn’t rise as much as the prices the room was booked for, and this changes everything even more considering that 84% of the clients, still according to Coach Omnium use the internet to book their hotel room and for 70% of them, the price is as key as the location when they choose their hotel. With all these elements, the public has their perception on the price of their hotel room.
However, what the study doesn’t mention is the activity habits of the questioned clients, particularly concerning the time of the year and even more if they still have the same habits. Hotel rates can change in big cities like Paris, and sometimes even from a day to the next. Therefore, a person booking a hotel in Paris in June will not have the same perception of the price of this room if 2 years before they stayed in the very same hotel from August the 1st to the 15th, time when hotels in Paris are cheaper than the rest of the year. In the same way, the reservation 2 years might have been done 2 days before to benefit from last minute rates (less expensive) and this year the reservation might have been done 3 weeks prior with a higher fare. That said, if that kind of data had been added in the Coach Omnium study, it wouldn’t have been summarized.
