HotStats reported a rise in room occupancy levels at hotels in the Middle East and Africa in December, boosting growth in revenue and profit. This positive performance marked a strong end to a year of mixed results for the region.

MEA hotels saw a 2.9-percent decline in average room rate last month to $189.18, although room occupancy rose 3.1 percent to 66.6 percent and RevPAR rose 1.8 percent to $125.94. Volume increased across most segments due to drops in average room rate in residential conference to 4.6 percent, individual leisure to 8.2 percent and group leisure to 9.2 percent. The rise in volume caused non-rooms revenues to rise in response, pushing total revenue per available room to increase 2.3 percent to $225.14. Food & beverage saw a 5.0-percent increase, while conference & banqueting rose 4.1 percent.

Profit levels at hotels in the MEA region also increased last month due to a 0.7-percent saving in payroll to 23.3 percent. GOPPAR increased 3.5 percent to $95.63 in response to the savings, creating a profit conversion of 42.5 percent of total revenue.

“The diversity of hotel markets across the Middle East & Africa and their key demand drivers means it always going to be a mixed bag of top and bottom line performance, but this year has been particularly volatile due to the ongoing oil crisis, political and economic instability and security concerns. It is therefore pleasing to report such a positive month of trading for hotels in the region at the end of 2017 and we look forward to profit performance recovering further in 2018,” Pablo Alonso, CEO of HotStats, said in a statement.