18 May 2016

2016- n° 129

In Q1 2016, the number of tourism nights rebounded (+1.0% year-on-year) Tourism occupancy in hotels, campsites and holiday and other short-stay accommodation in metropolitan France - 2016Q1

In the first quarter of 2016, throughout metropolitan France, the number of overnight stays in tourist collective accomodation recovered: +1.0% compared to the same period in 2015 after a sharp decline in Q4 (−1.8%), attributable to the November attacks. This recovery included the favorable effect of the leap year. Occupancy rose again due to French customers. Overnight stays of foreign customer continued to fall (−2.7%), but far less than the previous quarter, when they had plummeted (−8.7%).

The number of nights spent in hotels rebounded in Q1 (+1.8% year-on-year after −1.3%). Overnight stays of French customer accelerated (+2.8% after +1.1%), while foreign customer stabilised virtually Tourism nights in hotels went up sharply outside the Paris region, but continued to decline steeply in the agglomeration of Paris (−6.3% year-on-year after −6.8%).

The room occupancy rate decreased by 0.4 points year-on-year to stand at 51.0%, as the number of rooms offered increased faster than their marketing.

Stays in HOSSA shrank slightly in Q1 2016 (−0.5% year-on-year), after a sharp decrease in the previous quarter (−3.5%). Nights spent in tourist or hotel residences which represent the bulk of the HOSSA occupancy, continued to decline (−1.1% year-on-year after −4.8%) due to foreign customers disaffection (−9.1%).

The occupancy by area was similar to that for hotels, with even a further drop in the agglomeration of Paris and a brisk pace in other areas (other urban and rural area, and coastlines). However, overnight stays in mountain area were down (−2.9%), an under-performance compared to hotels (+7.0%).

The increase in overnight stays in the first quarter of 2016 was driven by the rise in March, while occupancy declined in January and February. The effects of the terrorist attacks of 13 November still had a negative impact on occupancy in January, and, to a lesser extent, in February. Moreover, in February this year, occupancy in mountain was curbed by the insufficient snow. However, the rise in March was partly due to a favorable schedule: in 2016, the winter school holidays for the academies of Paris, Creteil and Versailles ended in March (instead of February), and the Easter weekend was in end of March 2016 instead of April last year.

Compared to previous publication. the variation of the number of overnight stays in HOSSA in Q4 2015 has been lowered by 0.5 points (−3.5% instead of −3.0%) due to the integration of data known in the meantime. It is unchanged for hotels. The overall variation has been revised downwards slightly (−1.8% instead of −1.7%).