Tuesday 12 January, 2021
Ascott sees record year with 14,200 units Singapore: Ascott has opened or signed more than 14,200 units across 71 properties globally for 2020, exceeding its 2019 total and recording four consecutive years of record growth.
EDITOR'S COMMENT
I've spoken quite a bit in these comments over the last few months about how, in general, serviced apartments have performed beyond expectations during the pandemic, and how investors, and indeed the entire hospitality industry, has sat up and taken notice.
And this week, Ascott has released some quite remarkable numbers in its summary of 2020, which illustrate this. Despite the effects of the pandemic the company has recorded a fourth record year of new additions, with a whopping 14,200 opened or signed during the year.
There are several major positives to take from this - Ascott's developer partners are clearly bullish about the sector and are forging ahead with their plans; the new units are across numerous countries; and perhaps most encouragingly for the rest of the world - the majority of the new units are in China, where the pandemic started and where business appears to be approaching pre-pandemic levels.
This is in stark contrast to the UK hotel sector where a recent report from Knight Frank, which reveals that investment volumes in 2020 reached £1.8 billion, down 70 per cent from £6 billion in 2019, with 81 per cent of the transaction volume occurring in Q1. Hotel investment will eventually bounce back, I'm sure, but serviced apartments are in a much healthier place at the moment.
• It was good to see a serviced apartment company taking the lead with efforts to try to ease the process of business travel. Dream Luxury Serviced Apartments' 'Stay test Go!' offer is aimed at halving essential travellers' quarantine time to five days post-test. Hats off to them for such a forward-thinking initiative.
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Katie Houghton
Group head of sales: +44 (0)7535 135 116
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