Hotel Prices in Greece Exceed Pre-pandemic Levels, Says Study
Hotel prices in popular Mediterranean destinations, including Greece, significantly increased during July and August 2021, compared to the average prices of 2019, according to an analysis released by Mabrian Technologies.
Based on a sample of over 73,000 hotels, the analysis includes average prices per country for overnight stays during July and August 2021. Mabrian analyzed the average minimum price of a standard double room by destination and category published on the main online travel agencies. A comparison of the average prices published in online travel agencies during the same period in 2019 has also been included in order to understand the evolution of prices.
According to the analysis, Greece is, by far, the Mediterranean destination with the highest increase of prices. The rise reached 31 percent in four-star hotels and 47 percent in five-star hotels.
On the contrary, Turkey is the only Mediterranean country that experienced a drop of 4 percent in the prices of three-stars hotels.
With regard to the reasons that hotel prices increased in Mediterranean destinations, the Mabrian analysis refers to a number of important factors:
- First, as many hotels still remain closed or only open partially, evidently this affects prices: less supply always increases prices if demand remains stable.
- Equally the increase in prices in the five-star category can perhaps be partly explained by the fact that more wealthy travelers are not put off by the high costs of PCR tests – and that older travelers, who are generally wealthier and more likely to be generally retired, are less likely to be concerned about quarantine restrictions on return.
- There is some evidence that those that are traveling for holidays are spending longer periods of time in the destination, thus pushing up the total demand.
- There are of course other points to consider that might take more time for economists to analyze, including that hotels might be having to increase prices as their cost base has gone up due to Covid-19 measures and / or needing to make up for lost revenues.
- Finally, international travel — including transatlantic trips or journeys to Asia — have been reduced to a small fraction of their former levels. Desire to travel though has remained high so perhaps some of those people who previously wanted to go on a trip to the US or Thailand — or a cruise, which have almost entirely stopped – are now instead traveling in Europe, creating demand that previously would never have been there.
Mabrian is a travel intelligence platform and tourism data observatory based in Menorca, Spain.
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