Feature: Serviced Apartments Pictured: BridgeStreet Worldwide
expanded further across the UK’s secondary locations, with new openings in Nottingham, Windsor, Norwich, Salisbury, Farnborough, Bournemouth and Swansea. Yet still the serviced apartment sector accounted for just two per cent of the accommodation stock in the UK in 2010, having risen from 1.7 per cent in 2008 and 1.96 per cent in 2009. Clearly, there is plenty of room for growth
➔quarter of 2009 and average overall occupancy is climbing too. In 2010, London’s figure stood
at 89 per cent, three percentage points higher than in 2009, and the third quarter delivered the highest occupancy for the year, averaging 94 per cent from July to September. ASAP says the average net weekly rental rate
in London was £907, showing growth of 7.5 per cent on the 2009 figure of £843. Countrywide, overall occupancy for 2010 was
up four per cent on 2009 at 76 per cent, with the third quarter showing 81 per cent. Average net weekly rental rate for the regions grew to £594, a ten per cent increase on 2009. House of Fisher’s Harwood underlines the healthy position the sector finds itself in. She says, “The serviced apartment market in the UK showed exceptional growth last year with almost 57 per cent of corporate buyers in the UK now using serviced apartments. Companies have recognised that serviced apartments can be used as a way to reduce costs as well as the other benefits they provide such as wider
availability, flexible contract terms and improved standards.” No wonder, then, that providers are on
the look out for more premises and busy smartening up their existing stock. Citadines has just spent millions of pounds upgrading its Holborn-Covent Garden property (and is in the process of doing likewise at Les Halles in Paris) and is renovating its Trafalgar Square units for completion next January. And it’s not just all about the capital cities. Last year the sector
and providers are focussed on doing just that, fiercely competing to expand both at home and abroad. So in this flourishing market, how has the sector begun to mature? The Apartment Service’s managing director Charlie McCrow points to the more mature North American market for clues. There the hotel sector has made great strides into the serviced apartment market, with extended stay apartments a very common brand extension of familiar global hotels groups, ranging from Marriott’s Residence Inn to Intercontinental’s Staybridge Suites. He says, “If you look to the US, you will see
the market is maturer. Lots of hotels offer an extended stay product which offers the space of an apartment and the services of a hotel. The business model of a serviced apartment with hotel-like facilities is growing in the UK too, but here it’s Citadines, SACO and Premier Apartments travelling down that route.” Stuart Winstone, head of business relation-
ships at serviced apartment agency Silverdoor, believes the lines are blurring in some cases between the hotel and serviced apartment model because some new entrants have hotel backgrounds. “Certainly there are now some aspects of the hotel model in the serviced apartment business model. The way the market has developed, a lot of people have come into the serviced apartment sector from the hotel world and they are bringing their own thinking to proceedings. They are running the apartments like hotels,” he says. BridgeStreet Worldwide’s VP of sales and marketing EMEA, Jo Layton, flags up how
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it’s all about people... 18 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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