Britain

Deflation starts bringing hotel prices down

After months of rising food prices and tightening belts, it looks like deflation is definitely kicking in and we can expect prices to start falling. And it’s not just hitting the supermarkets. According to figures just released by Hotels.Com, the online travel booking service, hotel prices are coming down too.

The website’s latest ‘Hotel Price Index’, shows that hotels across the UK are dropping their prices. London hotels have seen the most dramatic fall in rates, dropping some 12% in the last quarter of 2008, and when the relative weakness of the pound is factored in, travellers from the US and Europe are experiencing prices down by as much as 24%.

David Roche, president of Hotels.com Worldwide, said: “This is the first time in the four years we have published the HPI that we have seen such marked price falls.”

“British travellers can enjoy some great savings at home and the UK has never looked so attractive for foreign visitors.”

The Hotel Price Index, or HPI, is calculated by tracking the real prices of hotel rooms for almost 70,000 hotels around the world. The average price of a London hotel rooms is now £111 per room per night.

Not all destinations are seeing decreasing prices, however. Bath remains the most expensive place to stay in the UK, and costs for hotel rooms rose by 3% in the last quarter of 2008.