Disconnect between luxury hotels and budget airlines

An article by Yeoh Siew Hoon about the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) Asia Connect conference in Singapore late August is an interesting read. The piece points out the disconnect between the rise of budget airlines in Asia coinciding with the majority of hotel development in the Asia pipeline focused on the high-end market.

The article cites a statistic that low cost air carriers in Asia currently account for 26% of all air traffic in the region and this number is predicted to rise to over 50% in the next ten years.

At the same time the majority of hotel development among 1,871 hotels (421,331 rooms) in the Asian pipeline scheduled for opening in the next three to five years are luxury hotels (25%) and Upper Upscale (27%), Upscale (31%) and Midscale/Economy 19%.

The publicly available data from STR Global Asia Pacific pipeline for July 2012 is different from the statistics reported at the HSMAI conference and do not show the hotel chain scale market segment breakdown.

1,641 hotels with 375,917 rooms in July 2012 Pipeline (STR Global).

• China 136,424 rooms
• India 27,908 rooms
• Indonesia 11,081 rooms
• Thailand 8,361 rooms
• Vietnam 7,102 rooms

Russia on a Budget (Airline)

This morning I saw an article in the Moscow News about EasyJet starting routes to Russia in 2013. EasyJet is the world’s second largest budget airline according to the report.

Russia, like China, is one of the hot spots for new hotel development. Most of the major global hotel chains are building more hotels outside the USA than within the USA over the past few years.

Is there a disconnect between the building of luxury and upper upscale hotels and the rising market share of budget airlines around the globe?

Do you as a traveler book luxury and upper upscale hotels after a budget airline economy flight?

Personally I fit this travel market demographic. I’ll suffer through an economy class flight, even a budget airline flight, when that saves the money to budget a better hotel experience.

I have long said I’ll suffer a 12 hour flight in economy to have a 5 night stay in a hotel suite.

Ideally a loyalty traveler can have both a premium cabin flight experience and a great hotel. But I prefer to put the majority of my budget into the experience of the vacation destination rather than focusing on the experience of getting to the location in a lie-flat bed when I find my budget and miles/points account balances will not accommodate both the premium flight experience and the premium hotel stay.

Loyalty Traveler post link: http://loyaltytraveler.boardingarea.com/2012/09/04/disconnect-between-luxury-hotels-and-budget-airlines/

Ric Garrido, writer and owner of Loyalty Traveler, shares news and views on hotels, hotel loyalty programs and vacation destinations for frequent guests. You can follow Loyalty Traveler on Twitter and Facebook and RSS feed.