Europe's summer hotel hotspots - Continental cities show strong growth in visitors

European destinations are seeing solid year-over-year growth for the summer holidays. Travellers are heading to the sunshine spots this August with cities such as Paris, Venice and Barcelona attracting increased hotel occupancy across the summer month, compared with 2012.

Forward-looking data from TravelClick, the leading hotel market intelligence provider, shows, at this point in the booking window, Parisian hoteliers are seeing visitor growth of almost a third (29.6 per cent) on average across August. Venice’s canals will see an increase in visitors with an 8.0 per cent rise in hotel occupancy on the same month in 2012 and Barcelona is showing strong weekend break demand, which will deliver an overall occupancy increase of 6.7 per cent for the month of August.

Paris is seeing a particular boom in visitors over the week of 3–9 August when the outdoor cinema festival begins and the outdoor performing arts festival, Paris Quartier d'ete, culminates. The French capital is showing an average rise in occupancy on the same dates in 2012 of more than two thirds (65.2 per cent), and committed occupancy at almost half for the seven days (48.6 per cent).

As would be expected, following London’s summer with the Olympics and Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, London hotels are showing a slight dip in bookings for August (down 15.8 per cent). There is still strong weekend tourism to the capital with Friday 16 and Saturday 17 August showing an occupancy increase of 62 per cent and 57.3 per cent respectively. The bank holiday weekend and weekend of the Notting Hill Carnival is also showing strong demand with bookings up 30.4 per cent and 21.4 per cent on the Friday and Saturday (23 and 24 August).

Info is based on data pulled on 6 June 2013, from 16 Paris hotels with a combined capacity of 5,189; 15 Barcelona hotels with a combined capacity of 3,187; 8 Venice hotels with a combined capacity of 1,393; 88 London hotels with a combined capacity of 18,656.