The combined effect of these decreases was to push the capital's rooms yield down to £59.22 ($93), a drop of 14% compared to March 2002. Regional hotels saw less dramatic changes due to their reliance on domestic trade, but even so occupancy fell 0.4% to 67.8%
Melvin Gold, Managing Director of hotel consultancy services at PKF, said: "The UK's hotel performance during March has been very disappointing but hardly unexpected in light of world events and the domestic economy.
"I wish I could predict that April's performance will be better but it will certainly be worse due to the conflict in Iraq and the Easter weekend. We may even see international issues such as the outbreak of the SARS virus in Asia having further impact on the already battered London market."
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