London has been ranked third in a global hotel occupancy league table for 2010 behind Sydney and Seoul.
The UK capital achieved an occupancy rate of 82.1%, just ahead of Hong Kong and New York, a report by Deloitte has revealed.
The city reported the highest occupancy in Europe and moved up two places in the rankings in the past year, posting revenue per available room (revpar) growth of 11.7% in local currency to year end at £104.
Hotels in Europe stole the show in the top 20 global hotel performance rankings for 2010, according to the analysis by the business advisory firm.
Based on the three key performance indicators of occupancy, ADR and revpar, European cities took 25 out of a possible 60 places.
Deloitte’s tourism, hospitality and leisure global managing director Alex Kyriakidis said: “Against a background of a sluggish economic recovery and austerity measures introduced across Europe, hotel performance recovered relatively well during 2010, with revpar up just short of 10% to €63.
“Although this is still some €11 below the revpar achieved in 2007, this is good news for the industry and as reported in the global rankings, there were some star performers in Europe.”
Kyriakidis added: “Revpar growth gained momentum in the capital during 2010 and the results were good despite the current economic uncertainty facing the UK economy.
“2011 may prove to be more challenging, however, as the city starts to see new hotel supply come on board in the run up to the 2012 London Olympic Games.”
Marvin Rust, Deloitte’s hospitality managing partner, said: “The future for hotels in Europe over the coming year remains uncertain as a number of countries continue on the slow road to recovery in terms of economic growth.
“Despite this, there are more than 124,000 rooms across Europe currently in the pipeline according to STR Global, and as London gears up for the 2012 Olympic Games it is no surprise that the city has the largest number of rooms in the ‘construction’ phase, with over 6,000 rooms in the pipeline.”