Hotel conference points
to recovery starting next year

A conference held for the hotel industry mid-May has left delegates feeling confident about the medium term future, while being aware of the short term challenges still to be faced.

The New Zealand Hotel Industry Conference 2009 was opened by Prime Minister - Minister of Tourism John Key, who gave the conference sector a brief but significant mention. The PM noted that business tourists represented high yield visitors and that they often took the opportunity to look around the country before or after meetings.

‘We are looking at what we can do to tap into this market.’

Overall, however, the hotel conference did not particularly focus on sectors.

Delegate John Farrell, area director sales and marketing New Zealand and South Pacific, says the event focused on overall profitability of today’s hotels and on how to establish the right environment to build new, successful hotels. ‘We didn’t really break it down to segments.’

Farrell says a presentation by Stephen Toplis, from Bank of New Zealand, made it clear that the industry will probably be ‘close to the bottom’ by the end of this year, early next and will probably start a recovery.

‘Tourism is the first to suffer and the first to come back.’

Simon Jamieson, general manager hotels group Auckland for SKYCITY Auckland, says the conference was useful as delegates could share experiences. ‘My sense is that things are patchy - some people are doing okay and others are not. One speaker pointed out that in difficult times the poor operators struggle. If you have not been marketing or investing in your customer these times will hurt. But if you have been a good citizen in the market you will get through this.’

Jamieson says he expects things will be ‘reasonably difficult’ until the end of the year. ‘I believe normal trends will apply, with the industry picking up in the summer season and until then the conference market being fairly much the same as in the past, even if it is a bit diminished.’

He also put a positive slant on figures which show that international tourism arrivals are down about five percent. ‘That means 95% of them are still coming.’

The conference was hosted by the New Zealand Hotel Council, Horwath HTL and Simpson Grierson, with Scenic Hotel Group the platinum sponsor.

Stephen Hamilton, director of Horwath HTL, says the event had over 250 delegates. ‘We were up comfortably on last year and that is encouraging given the difficult times. It indicates that we would have potentially had more registrations if budgets were not under controls and restraints.’

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