New York top of the pile for hotel prices

SURVEYS:WHILE HOTEL prices in Ireland continue to drop thanks to falling demand and a growing number of Nama hotels offering rooms at below cost, trends internationally are going in the opposite direction, according to a price survey published this week.

The hotel price barometer, which is carried out by website hotel.info, compares the cost of rooms in major cities across the world and it reports that New York is the most expensive hotel city in the world.

The average price of a hotel room in the Big Apple last month was €207 a night – this compares with a price of €167 in November 2009, a jump of 24 per cent.

Football fans will be dismayed to hear that Moscow, which is to host the 2018 World Cup Final, ranks as the second most expensive hotel city, according to the survey. The average price of a room in the Russian capital last month was €161, which compares with €158 last year.

At €159, Oslo was the third most expensive city for hotel rooms last month. London at €151 and Sydney at €150 rounded out the top five.

At the bottom of the table was Bangkok where the average price of a hotel room in November was €54 while Prague and Bucharest were the next cheapest with hotel rooms costing €65 and €69 respectively.

All told the list contained 30 cities – Dublin did not feature – with the average price of a hotel room across the full list coming in at €113 – up from €105 last year, an increase of just under 8 per cent.

While Dublin was not included on the list, a separate study by hotels.com published six weeks ago put the city as the 10th cheapest city for hotel prices among major holiday destinations worldwide.

It showed that the average price per room in the capital fell 7 per cent from €78 in the second quarter of 2009 to €73 for the same three-month period this year.