Sofitel needs 65-75% occupancy rate

Exceeding the 75% threshold is difficult given the lack of tourist attractions and of large conference centres.
“The reason we are ‘stuck’ with this occupancy rate is very simple. Hotels are filled-up during the week, but empty at weekends. At the same time, January, July and August are very low occupancy rate months,” says Bruno Vinette, Sofitel general manager.
The representatives of Sofitel, which operates on the four-star hotel market in Bucharest, say the best months in terms of hotel activity are March, April and May and September, October and November.
Foreign visitors coming to Bucharest on business make up 65% of Sofitel’s customers.
According to Vinette, Romanians visiting Bucharest, be they businesspeople or tourists, prefer the 2 or 3-star hotel services. As a result, the only way to boost the number of customers is to attract conference groups or tourists.
“We’d like to have more tourists, because businesspeople come on Tuesdays and leave on Fridays, with the hotel reaching an occupancy rate of only 50% on Fridays and even lower at weekends.
Yet, I don’t believe this is going to happen that soon because Bucharest is still lacking the tourist potential necessary to bring in visitors,” says Vinette.
The solution of attracting conference groups is not viable, either, since Bucharest does not have any specific centres for international conferences that could accommodate more than 1,000 people.
Groups of 40 or 50 people coming for business workshops, for which there are facilities in Bucharest, are not enough, says Vinette.
However, the occupancy rate in Bucharest does average around 60%, a figure much higher than the 41% national average, according to National Statistics Institute data.
According to the company’s officials in 2006, Sofitel, under a management contract with Accor, posted an occupancy rate of 76%, the highest among 4 and 5-star hotels in Bucharest. To reach this rate, Vinette banks on customers that are frequent guests of this hotel and on a highly flexible price policy.
To cope with personnel fluctuations, which damage service quality and implicitly the hotel’s occupancy rate, Vinette implemented a new performance-based salary policy two years ago.
Sofitel hotel ended 2006 with a turnover worth 10 million euros, an increase of around 10% compared with 2005.
The hotel is currently undergoing renovation, including the replacement of water installations and television sets, with rooms also to be refurbished this year.
The process of modernisation will be finalised by late 2007 with a cost of 500,000 euros, according to the hotel manager.
Other hotels on the four-star market of Bucharest include Phoenicia, Ramada Majestic, Golden Tulip, Novotel and Lido.