In Reply to: Hotel rate rise posted by RyRy on Monday, 25. August 2008 at 17:14 Bali Time:
It's a real catch 22. I'm so happy for the Balinese that they are seeing such an increase in tourism but at the same time, it's not the great deal it was just a year or 2 ago. I bring ladies groups to Bali twice a year and the Padma is increasing their rates for next March by 18% over this year and then the November.09 rate is 28% higher than what they gave me for this November. It pays to shop around but I think most hotels are experiencing occupancy rates of over 90% so now it's a supply and demand thing.
I'm in Canada and every major city in North America is experiencing a severe downturn in hotel business right now (except for NYC) so it's frustrating because there are some great deals to Mexico, Hawaii, Caribbean etc. Nothing compares to Bali though so we'll just have to suck it up if we want to get our Bali fix.
It will be interesting to see if this downturn in North America reaches Asia...if not, the prices will continue to go up. HKG hotels are also going up but not as much as the Bali hotels.