Investors have returned with force to the Spanish hotel sector. This is attested to by the high investment figures registered in the first quarter of 2022. In three months alone, 995 million euros were invested in the purchase of hotels in Spain, according to a report by the real estate consultancy CBRE.
During the first quarter, 37 hotel assets were transacted in Spain, totaling 5,042 rooms, according to the aforementioned consultancy. These figures are significantly higher than those registered in 2021 when 11 hotels with a total of 643 rooms were sold.
Of the hotels sold in these first months of 2022, a large percentage corresponded to high-class hotels, specifically, four-star (19) and five-star (6).
The predominant investor profile is headed by the institutional, followed by the hotel chains, concentrating between them close to 78% of the investment. Regarding the origin, Spain (41%) and Germany (20%) led the investing origin.
Regarding the type of assets, in the first three months of the year, investment in vacation hotels continued to outperform the urban segment (57% compared to 43%), which is justified by the positive outlook for the sector in terms of tourism activity and assets.
Geographically, the predominant locations during this first quarter were the Balearic Islands (24%), Madrid (22%), the Canary Islands (15%) and Barcelona (15%).
"Two years after the start of the pandemic, the hotel sector is taking off again thanks to the return of tourism and the consequent increase in demand," explains Jorge Ruiz, Director of Hotels at CBRE.
Hotel market
As for the hotel offer, Spain had at the end of the first quarter of the year a total of 1,098,201 available beds distributed in 11,723 hotels in which the occupancy rate was around 49%.
Regarding the project portfolio, the opening of some 170 hotels, with a total of some 23,000 rooms, is expected in Spain by 2024.
“The commercial results of the hotel industry in Spain grew significantly during this first quarter of the year, compared to the data for 2021 and remained similar to those obtained in the same period of 2020. If we compare it with the same period of 2019 (pre -Covid), in Spain as a whole, the average price per occupied room grew by +6%, while the average income per available room fell by 10%”, adds the Director of Hotels at CBRE.
