As the unrest in the Middle East is growing, the toursim influx is decreasing. This shows in the many hotels around Lebanon. A recent survey shows the the occupancy rate goes down as the the prices are going up. Meanwhile, Caretaker Tourism Minister Fadi Abboud remains optimistic about welcoming many tourists to Lebanon this summer.

Ernst & Young’s benchmark survey of the Middle East hotel sector indicated that the average occupancy rate at hotels in Beirut was 56% in the first quarter of 2013, down from 66% in the same quarter last year. According to Byblos Bank’s "Lebanon This Week", the occupancy rate at hotels in Beirut fell by ten percentage points, constituting the second steepest decrease among 16 markets in the Middle East and North Africa region, and relative to an average increase of 1.3 percentage points for the region.

The occupancy rate at Beirut hotels was the third lowest in the region in the covered period, while it was the seventh lowest in the first quarter of 2012. Occupancy rates at Beirut hotels were 49% in January, 60% in February and 58% in March 2013, compared to 60% in January, 64% in February and 74% in March 2012. Cairo had the lowest hotel occupancy rate at 28%, while Amman posted a drop of 22 percentage points in hotel occupancy, which was the steepest in the region.

The survey said that the average rate per room at Beirut hotels was $161 in the first quarter of 2013, ranking the capital’s hotels as the 11th most expensive in the region. The average rate per room at Beirut hotels decreased by 23.3% year-on-year and posted the steepest decrease among all markets in the region. The average rate per room in Beirut came below the regional average of $193.6, which increased by 1.7% from the same period last year.

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