You probably did not know it but the grandchildren of Madame Irma and Madame Soleil are hiding in hotel consulting firms. They do not predict the return of your loved one in 48 hours flat. No. But, they give you the gift of prophecies on what will be the hotel activity over the coming year, or even further if you ask them nicely.
When no hotel group now dares to put forward a simple short-term forecast, these pharmacies – with their trainees and their erasers – show how much they are much stronger than the strongest.
The 2015 clairvoyance fair was opened by Deloitte In Extenso. He promised us without batting an eyelid, repeated by AFP: “For 2015, the study provides for” a clarification of all ranges “in particular thanks to a favorable euro / dollar exchange rate and an increase in demand (…). The improvement should result in an increase (in RevPar) of between 1% to 3% in the luxury hotel industry and from 1.5% to 3% in the mid-range market. The study is based on a “confirmation of the recovery” in the high end with an expected improvement between 2 and 4%. In the low-end segment, growth prospects are much more modest, with an expected increase in RevPar within a range of 0 to 2% in economic terms and a decline of 2,(sic). Difficult to be more precise and to find more arguments so solid.
He arguably has a competitive crystal ball, with up-to-date review book. The final result in 2015 is of course different from these forecasts (see table below); the attacks in Paris will not be a fair justification for this failed divination, because summer tourism, very good, has played the compensator. INSEE also indicates for 2015, the same occupancy rate as in 2014: 59.2%.
Hotel activity results provided by Deloitte In Extenso for 2015
So, obviously, one should not seek a correlation between the final actual results and the forecasts made . Thus, Deloitte In Extenso had announced with drums and trumpets (L’Echo Touristique of February 12, 2014) that luxury hotels should see their income grow by 4 to 6% in 2014. The same presents at the end of the year a RevPar achieved up only… 0.2% for this range. He saw the super-economical hotel industry evolving between -0.5% and + 1% for the same year. The same indicates that this range fell by – 3.5% almost a year later. And so on for a long time and renewed for the year 2015. Nice crash. Nothing to boast about, but he perseveres.
For 2016, “Deloitte-In Extenso forecasts – with a wet finger ? – an increase in activity from 1.1% to 2.1%, especially in the mid-range category (from + 2 to + 3% ) “ , one can read in a newspaper. The game will not be whether he was wrong but how much he was wrong.
The fortune telling fireworks were lit by the PwC firm (Le Quotidien du Tourisme of March 3, 2015) . He knows how to see even further than his colleague, until 2016 outright . Why not until 2050 since we are no longer close to delirium. He predicts – therefore from March 2015 – that “The Parisian RevPar should grow by 1.8% in 2015 and 2.3% in 2016 to reach € 257. » PwC is able to have the same visions on a whole bunch of other cities in the world, beyond Paris.
How to say, there, it is necessary to bow one knee to the ground in front of so much knowledge, but also of lucidity. You don’t even need to check whether PwC has been right or wrong in the past. At this level of predictions, we light a candle to thank the oracle for putting balm in our hearts.
But, still much more silly than the others, small players that they are, MKG does not even give away its invaluable traditional forecasts any more to the press , as in the past. We probably tickled him too much on this register, who knows. He no longer even distils them in a dropper. He sells them. And at the cost of caviar. His unavoidable predictions for 2016-2017 (sic) are marketed for the sum of € 960. But, it was € 4,700 (!) Again last year . A hell of a broken price … Undoubtedly heavy at this price. With a “100% guaranteed result” offered or a grigri as a gift of consolation in the event of non-fulfillment of the predictions made?
MKG says that “These forecasts are calculated on the basis of a model which relies on the historical real correlations of more than 20 years of hotel performance with macroeconomic parameters: evolution of GDP, domestic consumption, supply hotel industry (additional or declining) planned for the targeted segment, the international component of demand… ” (sic). There, we touch the divine, the supreme science. Provided that the big investors take it into account.
Install smoke detector …
The fortune tellers in shorts and fairy mages do not feel ridiculous covering them, while everyone has observed that it is impossible to make any forecast in tourism (as in the economy) since. at least fifteen years and more certainly since 2008 (advent of the financial crisis become economic). No cycle, no repetition, no logic.
No one can say without lying what the occupancy rates and RevPar will be in a month’s time , with all the vagaries that affect tourism, the effects of the Internet and last-minute departures,… so at a year and more , c t is science fiction for teens.
The announcements of these prophet-diviners are in any case always thwarted by reality. When this is not the case – shall we agree, on a number or two – it is due purely to chance or luck.
In any event, we sometimes wonder if someone thinks that this is an insult to the intelligence of professionals.
So why do it? To be promoted in the media. That’s all. And it is serious.
Hotel economic barometers: look for the error …
But before the worm-eaten forecasts, there is the observation. When INSEE (the only reliable one) indicates that the French hotel industry achieved in 2014, but also in 2015, cumulatively, 59.2% occupancy rate , that MKG speaks of 65.4% for 2015 and Deloitte In Extenso from 63% to 67.9% depending on the category (he is careful not to give an overall figure – we wonder why) – see table above – we are entitled to think that private practices could a little too much force on the sparkling wine (to make it foam).
The difference is enormous with more than… 21 million overnight stays! Just that. The problem is that these statistics, which are not representative for the entire hotel industry, provided by these private agencies, are likely to disturb the understanding of the hotel economy, with a deleterious consequence for professionals.
Insee’s economic barometer (once again, the only reliable one) surveys all types of hotels – more than 15,000 – and not just integrated chains and a few large hotels like the others. Finally, concerning the barometers of private consulting firms, let us not ask ourselves too much what their methodology and their “real” sample are. Move along, nothing to see !
MKG claimed at the beginning of 2016 “to base itself on the situation of 14,950 hotels (chains and independent)” – taken over by Relaxnews -. Except that this sample is totally impossible. Neither he nor other pharmacies can physically question so many hotels that would not answer him anyway . It is easier with the chains – around 3,200 hotels in France – whose hotel groups send an email with Excel spreadsheet every month, which is sufficient to provide information on their activity results, hotel by hotel. More comfortable, isn’t it, than getting tired of investigating several thousand farms and cooler to disguise figures from integrated channels by pretending that they are figures from the
The same also argued that there would be a total of 23,000 hotels in France (Relaxnews), before publishing in his webzine that there would be only 18,150. It has been at least 20 years since there have been 23,000 hotels in France. But, the bigger it is, the more it goes, doesn’t it?
If tarot, coffee grounds, and grimoires can replace professional studies, then why bother to do so? You might as well write everything on a corner of the table, promising a pseudo-scientific guarantee.
See our previous article on the same subject , to confirm that the phenomenon is increasing.