Hotel prices go up, bookings go down

Last month, December, hotel prices in the Balearics went up by 1.02 per cent, twice the national average and the third highest in Spain. Surprisingly, some may say, hotel bookings in the Balearics were down by eight per cent on December 2000, the biggest slump in Spain. “But do not drop your prices,” the hoteliers are being told by the local government which claims that a few winter bargains will not help to push bookings up. According to data from the Hotel Price Index and the National Statistics Institute, hotel bookings for Spain dropped by four per cent, half the Balearic decline with Germans down 6.4 per cent and visitors from the United States 23 per cent. Clients worst hit by the increase in hotel rates were business men and women; hotels hiked their corporate rates by nearly ten per cent while weekend-break rates increased by 4.2 per cent.