What the Middle East conflict means for hotels

Like for many around the world, the situation in the Middle East has been a major focus for us in the past few weeks.

It is hard to fathom the personal toll on those directly affected and our support goes out to everyone caught up in the violence.

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But as an Association we have also been working hard to understand what it all means for the accommodation sector here in Australia.

Travel and accommodation continue to be disrupted, and we have already seen significant cancellations. However, at this stage occupancy has largely remained stable.

In the early days of the hostilities, we had existing guests needing to extend nights, people already here needing urgent accommodation, and airline flight crews who were grounded in Australia and needing help.

I would like to acknowledge our members for the calm and efficient way they responded to the crisis. Despite the disruptions, their values shone through.

I was heartened by stories of care packages being handed to many guests needing that extra support.

But as events in the region continue to widen, our focus has turned to what this means in the more medium and longer-term for Australian tourism. It’s important we’re on the front foot to brief the government and other stakeholders about how it is affecting our sector.

The data and anecdotal feedback our member hotels have been providing has been invaluable. I have also worked to brief ministers and government departments.

Our concerns are broadly about people’s confidence to travel, particularly to long haul destinations like Australia.

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We have already seen airfares rise and aviation capacity reduced. And the most insidious issue we face is traveller uncertainty.

We saw first-hand during the long, stop-start recovery from the global pandemic that confidence is easily lost and very hard to get back.

When you add into the mix the cost-of-living pressures felt in many parts of the world, a holiday starts to look like a risky, expensive gamble better left until times are quieter.

As I mentioned earlier, most major capitals have seen no huge change in occupancy yet. Figures to mid-March show Sydney up about two percent on this time last year, which could be mainly due to people extending their stays, while Melbourne was up about four percent with the welcome boost from a successful Formula One. Perth has had a good start to the month, up about five percent, while Adelaide and Hobart were mostly steady.

But, really, these figures are misleading.

It is far too early to tell how this will play out and the figures from the Easter weekend will probably be the first real test of how this will affect us here and how much damage has been done to the travelling public’s confidence.

Without being too pessimistic, I expect the situation will get worse before it gets better.

I hope the uncertainty will be over in a few weeks rather than a few months, but at the time of writing it seems unlikely.

We all understand that world events—or the actions of certain world leaders—can have a huge effect on tourism and our businesses here. These are things out of our control.

But the uncertainty is easier to live with when you focus on what we can control. And as an Association, we are in our strongest position yet.

Our members are employing more people and contributing more to the economy than we ever have.

We are working tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure our members views are known in the halls of power, and we are doing everything we can to support our industry during this tough time.

This article first appeared in the Autumn edition of AccomNews. Click below to explore.