2011 by the numbers

At the start of each year, I sit down and work out our sales productions for hotels for the calendar year just gone to find out which cities are the biggest and which hotels get most of our bookings.

Here is a list of the capital cities that were most productive for us and how they compared to 2010:

1. Darwin (up 32%)
2. Brisbane (up 130%)
3. Perth (up 240%)
4. Sydney (down 14%)
5. Melbourne (down 55%)
6. Canberra (down 65%)
7. Adelaide (down 84%)

Comparing the cities to their ranks last year, Melbourne moved up the ladder mainly thanks to Tiger Woods and the President's Cup in November while Adelaide received the wooden spoon having fallen from 5th to 7th. The bottom three cities were very, very quiet for us and were not even close to Sydney in 4th, I hope this will change in 2012.

The positives were the great production in Perth and Brisbane which came as no surprise as they kept us very busy last year. I've nicknamed Perth "boomtown USA" because it fills almost every week (midweek) due to the mining boom, there aren't enough hotels to cope with the demand and the prices are through the roof. Brisbane is benefitting from the mining industry as well and really narrowed the gap between it and Darwin this year (which was miles ahead in 2010). Darwin continued to be our # 1 city purely due to a large contract we were helping with. Unfortunately this work is basically over now so it will take a huge drop next year.

Here is the list of the 10 hotels around Australia that we make the most bookings with:

1. Mantra Pandanas (Darwin)
2. M on Mary (Brisbane)
3. Perth Ambassador (Perth)
4. Mantra on the Esplanade (Darwin)
5. Chifley at Lennons (Brisbane)
6. All Suites Perth (Perth)
7. Macarthur Chambers (Brisbane)
8. Hotel Grand Chancellor (Brisbane)
9. Mantra on Murray (Perth)
10. Hotel Ibis (Perth)

One of the goals I set Adam at the start of last year was to help us book more rooms with less hotels rather than some rooms with lots of hotels. The best example of this in action is that the total sales for our top 10 hotels increased by 90% from their counterparts in 2010.

Back in the office

Today marks our first day back in the office for 2012.

January is a very quiet time for the corporate travel market so while our hours are officially 8:30 - 5 (Brisbane time), there may be times over the next week or two when the phone is diverted during these hours. We might be out catching up with some of our hotel contacts or sometimes if its quiet we're just taking an early mark. If you do call and get the voicemail during normal business hours please just leave a message and we'll get back to you shortly.

February is one of the busiest months of the year for us so things will quickly return to madness around here!

I hope you have a fantastic 2012 and we look forward to talking with you soon.