Wales tourism accommodation occupancy surveys: January to March 2023

This Accommodation Occupancy report provides information on the occupancy levels of serviced and self-catering accommodation, as well as hostels and camping/caravan sites though no data is available for camping and caravan sector data in this report due to seasonality of this category. There is also third-party data from Transparent (short term lets), and STR Global (large hotel chains).

Serviced sector

• Occupancy rose steadily through Q1, with March overall at 59% room occupancy. North Wales and South East had higher room occupancy.
• Larger properties have higher occupancy levels with Hotels significantly outperforming Guesthouses / B&Bs.
• Third party STR data shows hotels with 50 to 100 rooms are performing the best in terms of occupancy.
• STR data shows a steady increase in occupancy, and comparisons with 2022 also show a year on year increase for each month.
• Average Daily Rate was higher year on year for January and February but dropped below 2022 levels in March. RevPAR shows a similar pattern.

Self catering sector

• Unit occupancy rose steadily month on month (55% in March) but bed occupancy dipped slightly (peaking in February at 45%, dropping to 40% in March).
• Regionally South-West Wales occupancy was well ahead of North, Mid and South-East Wales.
• Businesses which are part of an agency or collective group achieved 64% room occupancy – significantly higher than independent businesses (27%).
• Third party Transparent data shows that short term let occupancy has low variation month on month and is consistently below 2022 levels for the same period across all regions.

Hostel sector

• The hostel sector showed month on month increases in occupancy (41% in March) with levels somewhat below but comparable to other sectors.

Camping and caravan sector

• Due to seasonal closures Camping and Caravan sites were not asked about occupancy during this period.