Impact Of Major Sporting Events On Hotel Industry

STR analyses how benchmarking benefit hotels in understanding the trends, especially global sporting events, helping hoteliers with better pricing.

- STR

Hosting major sporting events has been considered as a strategy to enhance the awareness, appeal and profitability of the tourism destination. For the lodging industry, such events could help in generating more demand which in the end will help boost the hotel key performance indicators (KPIs).

In India for example, several key markets experienced significant hotel performance growth as host to the Indian Premier League in April and May 2018. When comparing match host dates with nonevent dates during the same months, the highest premiums in revenue per available room (RevPAR) were recorded in Chennai, Jaipur and Kolkata. Minimum impact was seen in Mumbai and Bangalore, while decreases were reported in New Delhi and Pune.

As displayed in the infographic, Chennai registered a RevPAR premium of nearly 150% during the 10 April match between the Chennai Super Kings and the Kolkata Knight Riders.

While the overall premium was less significant when spread across several host dates for Mumbai, the night of the final (27 May) between Chennai and the Sunrisers Hyderabad did produce RevPAR growth of 31% compared with non-match host dates in May.