The brand, which has about 30 hotels in the UK and 520 worldwide, also saw a 6 per cent increase in room nights across its portfolio.
Tim Davis, managing director of brand and communications, told BigHospitality that the UK performance mirrors that of the overall 70-country portfolio.
“There is an active luxury travel consumer out there. Wallets are squeezed and people are constantly analysing where they’re going to spend their disposable income, but what we are seeing is that luxury hotel stays are one of the options that stays on the table for longer than something else – people might go out less or buy less gifts, but holidays and hotel stays are one of the things that they’re determined to be able to spend money on.
“They may well shorten their breaks, but some of our hotels are actually seeing people staying longer because they’ve decided that the holiday is the main thing they want to spend their money on this year.”
Core hotels’ recovery
For the first time in a few years, the brand’s ‘basket of hotels’ – the 216 properties that have been part of it for over seven years – also showed a 6 per cent year-on-year rise in revenue, benefiting from the end of the recession.
CEO Paul Kerr said: “It’s particularly encouraging to see a rise in our basket – over the past few years SLH has grown by adding new hotels to the brand but the basket of hotels has remained fairly static. With the end of the recession, it’s a positive outlook for our core hotels, those that have been with us for many years, which are now seeing an uplift in travel and expenditure.”
Mobile bookings
SLH recorded an impressive 208 per cent year-on-year increase in mobile reservations in the first half of 2014 – and 20 per cent rise in reservations made from tablets. Mobile views of the website also grew by 50 per cent.
As a result, the firm is preparing to relaunch its website with a fully responsive design in September.
“A lot of it is natural growth – we are launching a new website in September with a responsive design, very much a mobile first approach to all the elements, and that’s a complete rebuild.
“The increase we’ve seen on the existing site is probably following the trend that a lot of hotel brands have seen. It’s a natural trend but we are definitely trying to harness the power of that trend and making conversion shorter and making it easier for people to book through a personalised site,” Davis added.
Expansion
SLH has added 27 hotels to its global portfolio so far in 2014, but Davis explained that there is no numerical target when it comes to growing the brand – rather geographic ones. This year the company would like to increase its presence in US hub cities such as Chicago and Boston, as well as in Australia and New Zealand.