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.

Day at the cricket

We've done a LOT of work with Mantra Pandanas in Darwin over the last 18 months and this (mainly) led to an invite for me to a corporate box at the cricket on the second day of the first test between Australia and New Zealand.

I'm not a huge cricket fan but a day out of the office after the madness of peak season was something to look forward to. Plus, corporate box, food & drink, etc ... unlikely I'm going to turn that down! As you can see from the picture below, the weather wasn't great but that was a good thing for us (and no doubt the players) as it wasn't too hot.

The action on the field was a little slow but the company was great and the food and drinks flowed. Thanks so much to Edith, our sales manager from Mantra for the invite and her generous hospitality, it was a fantastic way to spend a Friday afternoon!

2010 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. I didn't do it in 2009 because, well the numbers took such a dive from 2008 and 2007 due to the GFC/economic slowdown that it just didn't seem worthwhile. So back in 2008 I compared production to 2007 for each city but since I've skipped a year, I won't worry about doing that this time. This year (2011) it will certainly be interesting to compare against the 2010 numbers.

Anyway, here is a list of the capital cities and which were the most productive for us (from best to worst):

1. Darwin
2. Brisbane
3. Perth
4. Sydney
5. Adelaide
6. Canberra
7. Melbourne

Apologies to our friends in Tasmania, but we did hardly any room nights in Hobart so I don't have them on the list. 2010 was the first year that our home town of Brisbane wasn't our biggest city. Thanks to a very large client that we look after, Darwin was the big mover on the list and sales were substantially ahead of Brisbane in second. Melbourne has really dropped off for us over the last few years and has now fallen to the bottom.

Thanks to the aformentioned large client, our top 2 hotels in the country are in Darwin. Here is the list of the 10 hotels around Australia that we make the most bookings with:

1. Mantra Pandanas (Darwin)
2. Mantra on the Esplanade (Darwin)
3. Mantra on Hay (Perth)
4. Oaks Charlotte Towers (Brisbane)
5. Mantra on Northbourne (Canberra)
6. Chifley at Lennons (Brisbane)
7. M on Mary (Brisbane)
8. Aarons All-Suites (Perth)
9. Citigate & Sebel King George Square (Brisbane)
10. The Portal Hotel (Brisbane)

Mantra Pandanas exterior

Darwin trip

I'm sure most of my friends are tired of me talking about Darwin when they ask how business is going ... but what can I say, its been a LARGE part of things over the last few months. While I "patiently" wait for the main part of our business to return to normal (that is helping the travel management companies during peak dates), we've been making hay while the sun shines by booking plenty of long-stay accommodation in Darwin.

So a much needed trip to Darwin took place last week. I had been keeping an eye on the Virgin Blue happy hour specials and it paid off as I picked up flights for basically half the normal price and began planning the visit. Almost all of the accommodation we've been booking in Darwin has been at Mantra Pandanas and Mantra on the Esplanade so they were my first point of call when it came to organising a room for myself. Thanks to Angie in sales, I was given a one bedroom water view apartment (pictured below) at Pandanas which was very nice. I was lucky enough to be on the top floor so had great views, the apartment was a good size and of course fully self-contained.

Virgin Blue has only one flight from Brisbane in to Darwin and one flight out each day and they're not pretty. Land at 12:45 am and fly out at 1:40am ... ouch! I didn't mind too much as it was a really quick trip to see the two Mantra properties, say hi and thanks to the reservations staff that have been looking after us and also check out the newly refurbished Holiday Inn. It was a good trip and great to put faces to names that we've been working with so closely.

And yes it was of course pretty warm up there and it took me a few days to catch up on lost sleep ...

2008 by the numbers

I hope everyone thoroughly enjoyed the festive season. Susan and I started back on Monday while Adam has another week off and returns on Tuesday the 13th.

One of the first things I do around this time of the year is to work out our hotel room production for the calendar year just gone. This shows where we have booked most of our rooms and also how each city has performed compared to previous years.

Here are the results in order of our sales for each capital city (largest to smallest).

1. Brisbane down 40% (last year down 12%)
2. Perth up 77% (last year up 140%)
3. Melbourne down 40% (last year up 30%)
4. Sydney down 20% (last year up 100%)
5. Darwin up 95% (last year up 150%)
6. Adelaide up 1% (last year up 240%)
7. Canberra down 80% (last year up 90%)

As you can see, we and the hotel industry in general have felt the economic slowdown and the market definitely isn't as strong as it was the year before.

We weren't surprised to see Perth surge up the ladder (4th last year). Darwin's move up did shock as was the realisation that Adelaide hadn't risen more. We thought it had definitely outperformed.

Thanks to the strong performance of Perth, we also had a new # 1 hotel this year, Novotel Langley Perth (Advantages king room pictured below). Our top 5 is normally all Brisbane hotels but the Marriott at # 3 was the only Brisbane hotel this year.

Our top 5 hotels in 2008:

1. Novotel Langley Perth
2. Diplomat Canberra
3. Brisbane Marriott Hotel
4. Mantra Pandanas Darwin
5. Meriton Kent Street Sydney