The Airport Hotel Study (AHS) was conceived by The Mercurius Group (Mercurius) to shed some much-needed light on the airport hotel sector in Australia and New Zealand, including:

• Overall size of the industry in terms of number of hotels;
• The category of hotels currently operating;
• Benchmarks of hotels in terms of number of beds, Average Daily Room Rate (ADRR), Occupancy and Revenue per Available Room (REVPAR);
• Key hotel operators; and
• Services offered within hotels.

As hotels increasingly become a key feature of an airport’s services both in terms of customer satisfaction and revenue to airports, the demand for a definitive study on the sectors from airports, hotel operators, planners, architects, and investors has grown – demand now fulfilled by the AHS.

Mercurius provides strategy, space planning, performance, financial performance evaluation,
concept development and feasibility, tenancy planning and leasing services to the travel retail
sector. Our clients include airports, retailers, brands, governments, planners, architects, financiers, and
investors, while our sector coverage includes F&B, duty free, specialty retail, advertising, hotels, car
parking, car rental and ground transport.

Our consultants all have the combination of both strategic and operational travel retail experience and
have worked for either airports, retailers, or brands (and in some cases all three). The Mercurius team
– working together with the team from The Moodie Davitt Report – have also completed multiple industry studies including:

• the 2018/19 Airport Commercial Revenues Study which benchmarks the commercial revenue performance of more than 100 airports around the world;
• the 2016/17 Airport Car Parking Study which benchmark car park products and pricing from 336
  airports around the world; and
• the 2020/21 Airport Food & Beverage Study which benchmarks the F&B programs of the top 26 airports from across Australia and New Zealand.

As a result of our experience in developing industry studies, we understand what is required of an industry study, how the data is gathered, validated analysed and presented and what is important to the various participants in the industry. We also know how to identify trends that add value to our clients and how best to improve the financial returns from airport commercial activity.

We anticipate the AHS will provide valuable insight to:

• Airport and hotel Boards, financiers and investors seeking to understand the value that can be brought by airport hotels;
• Airport executives seeking to build and benchmark their hotel programs;
• Hotel operators wanting to understand the depth and range of the airport hotel market in Australia and New Zealand; and
• Airport planners, architects, designers and builders involved in airport terminal development.

The AHS draws on in-house databases, industry expertise and relationships built up by our team over the past 30 years, as well as publicly available resources.

For this project, we are also grateful for the assistance of Ron de Wit, Managing Director Australia of Horwath HTL. The Horwath team provided Mercurius with anonymised and aggregated data from their hotel performance database so that we could compare and contrast airport hotel performance with other hotels.