Nearly four out of ten hotel rooms in Bergen were empty during the World Cup, but high prices could have saved the companies.
Only 3.2 percent more hotel rooms were sold in Bergen last week, compared to the same week last year, Dagens Næringsliv writes.
Peter Wiederstrøm from Wiederstrøm Hotel Consulting has analysed the numbers, covering just over 6,000 hotel rooms at 30 hotels in Bergen. He says the numbers are very surprisingly.
“The positive side is, that the room rates have increased very strongly from a thousand kroner for the same week last year, to well over 1,500 kroner this year. In an operational perspective, it is better to sell fewer rooms at a higher price, than to sell many rooms at low prices”, says Wiederstrøm.
Kjetil Smørås, owner of several hotels in Bergen, says much of the problem come from, that the organizer of the championship, UCI, who booked 80 percent of the town’s rooms, cancelled half of the reservations.
“We could not just lower prices to fill the remaining rooms, when we had sold other rooms at a much higher price,” says Smørås.
Direktor of Tourism, Ole Warberg is also quite sure that the city hotels would be able to sell far more rooms, if the organizer UCI had cancelled them earlier.
© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today
