Dumfries and Galloway July Accommodation Performance

July 2015

Some 194 Dumfries & Galloway-based hoteliers, operators of B&Bs, self-catering cottages / apartments, guest houses, holiday parks, caravan and camping sites, amongst other accommodation providers shared performance figures with LJ Research. The findings will contribute towards the identification of business growth opportunities and input towards the Tourism Strategy for Dumfries and Galloway.

The 4 charts below show accommodation performance for different geographical areas of Dumfries & Galloway and for accommodation sub-sectors in the region.  Participating accommodation providers are given this and additional information to allow them to evaluate their performance against that of others.

Click here to find out how to take part.

Average occupancy across all areas and sectors was 78.23% (up from June when it was 64.45%).

The average daily rate (i.e. average daily room rates for hotels, B&Bs, guest houses, etc; average self-catering unit rate for self-catering accommodation providers and average daily pitch rate for caravan / camping sites) was £61.24 (up from June when it was £56.55).

Industry Insight

Accommodation providers we surveyed shared the following comments about factors that affected July’s business:

Many  people were commenting on the impact of the bad weather:

– The operator of a Hotel in Stewartry said: “Weather played a part in July – we found ourselves having to discount harder to drive business in and saw an 8% drop in occupancy year on year.”

– Three accommodation provider identified the poor weather as the main factor that affected July’s business.

– The operator of a self catering accommodation in Stewartry said:”Lack of sun & too much rain – We have noticed that the BBC’s weather app is very pessimistic. Its summary for the day will be a rain symbol even if it is only slightly raining for a short time  a small percentage of the day. We now provide summaries to our guests from the site www.yr.no The Norwegian weather service. Not only does it seem more accurate but the summary seems more in keeping with the whole days weather. They do a very handy pdf summary that prints out as an well.”

We also collected a few comments about different factors:

– The operator of another Hotel in Stewartry said: “July was not as good as last year in general everything has gone down at least twenty percent over all business has gone down by a major percent and its worrying as everything has gone up so the vat is crippling the country definitely our trade  every other country the vat is a lot less for our trade”

Finally, the operator of a Guest House in Wigtownshire said: “Once again; occupancy for July is substantially down on July 2014 ( by 15%) and by 30% on July 2013.  Regrettably insufficient new visitors are finding their way to Wigtownshire to offset the ongoing loss from ageing of the traditional customer base.”

To view January results, click here.

To view February results, click here.

To view March results, click here.

To view April results, click here.

To view May results, click here.

To view June results, click here.