Beirut hotel occupancy in five and four star hotels dropped five percentage points in January 2021, compared to the same month in 2021, reaching a rate of 29 percent, according to Ernst & Young’s Middle East hotel benchmark survey.

Beirut’s hospitality market experiences an Average Daily Rate (ADR) growth of 142 percent from $88 in January 2020 to $213 in January 2021, which led to an increase in Revenues Per Available Room (RevPAR) by 110 percent over the same period.

Beirut’s hospitality market performance is largely attributed to the increase in hotel bookings due to new year holiday celebration and the relaxed Covid-19 restrictions during that time as per EY.

The influx of nearly 80,000 Lebanese expats to the country and the 72 hours of quarantine at a government approved hotel for all the visitors may have endured a strong performance during the start of the year, as per the same source.

Despite the healthy hospitality sector performance, Beirut is still dealing with challenging economic crisis driven by the devastating financial crisis, foreign currency crunch, deep inflation and the threatening rise in the Covid-19 cases post the Christmas and New Year Holidays. Considering these challenges along with the imposition of nationwide lockdown and other stricter restrictions are expected to compromise the region’s ability to keep up the performance going forward.

The occupancy rate within Beirut was ranked tenth among 14 cities included in the survey. It was directly surpassed by Kuwait City and Cairo (40 percent and 31 percent respectively). It is worth noting the the city’s growth rate ranked second out of 14 surveyed cities, contracting by 4.5 percent year-on-year.

The rate of the capital’s hotels was the second highest in the region. It was only surpassed by Dubai ($264) and it directly surpassed that of Jeddah ($211). Beirut ranked sixth in the region in terms of room’s yields.