Hotels are under extreme pressure across Europe and there is no investors’ rush to put money in these assets under the current tough economic conditions. Property Forum asked Péter Takács, Investment Director at Newmark VLK Hungary about the way out from this crisis and the chances of local mid-size investors in the CEE region.

New international hotel chains will appear in Budapest for the first time. Budget hotels will remain competitive. Slow recovery of conference tourism gives some hope to the hospitality industry in Hungary, Csaba Tóth, Director, Head of Hotels at CBRE Hungary says to Property Forum.

Most hotels in Budapest will see their revenues decrease by more than 70% compared to 2019 this year, while hotels outside the capital expect 20% to 40% lower revenues, according to a representative survey commissioned by the Hungarian Hotel and Restaurant Association.

According to a new bill, Airbnb landlords in the Czech Republic have to share data with the administrative bodies. Also, the Czech Parliament plans to allow tenants without income due to the coronavirus restrictions not to pay rent until the end of July.

Airbnb has announced further actions to support users through the COVID-19 crisis. Guests who have reservations made before March 14 that begins anytime on or before May 31, can cancel the reservation and get a full refund or a travel credit if they are impacted by COVID-19 and can’t travel. The accommodation platform will also pay $250 million to hosts to help cover the cost of COVID-19 cancellations.

Similarly to 2017, the Airbnb activity in Budapest showed strong growth (25% y-o-y) in overnight stay in 2018 as well, exceeding 1.8 million. This figure reached 70% increase by the end of last year since 2016, says the latest Budapest city report on Airbnb released by Colliers International and Hotelschool The Hague.

Airbnb activity in Budapest shows strong growth in overnight stays in 2017, reaching almost 1.5 million, which represents an increase of 35% y-o-y. The top 3 neighbourhoods (District V, VI and VII) account for 69% of the total Airbnb bookings in Budapest, says the latest Budapest city report on Airbnb released by Colliers International and Hotelschool The Hague. All data is directly provided from Airbnb through AirDNA’s authentic source.

New research from Colliers International and Hotelschool The Hague reveals that despite many countries recently introducing legislation to restrict the use of Airbnb, the hospitality service continues to grow in five main European cities – London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid and Paris.

In 2017 approx. 90% of the total investment volumes in the commercial real estate were recorded in retail and HTL on the Croatian market. Most of the investment and development activity came from the investors already present on the market. Newcomers were mostly focused on distressed/value-add or brownfield opportunities in the HTL sector. Retail and HTL will remain the most active sectors in terms of investment and development volumes in 2018, Colliers projects.

The total transaction volume on the CEE hotel investment market increased to €700 million in the first half of 2017 from the €630 million transacted in H1 2016. This represents a yearly growth of 11 percent which is significantly larger than the 0.3 percent growth registered in the western part of Europe. High yields, booming tourism and strong economic growth are the main reasons behind growing interest in the hotel markets of Central and Eastern European capitals on the behalf of international investors.