Around the world

• The results of the seventh GSAIR report in to the global serviced apartment industry provide fascinating, and for the most part, encouraging reading.

A 23 per cent increase in global inventory over just two years represents incredible growth, and shows that there is still huge room for expansion until the sector becomes truly mature – as a comparison, the total US hotel market achieved around  two per cent growth in supply in 2017. Europe, where the concept has the most room for growth, was unsurprisingly the region which saw the fastest increase in supply, and there is no sign of this trend slowing.

However, year-on-year corporate use of serviced apartments for business travel has fallen by nine per cent, assignment/project work by 18 per cent and relocation by eight per cent. As the report says: “That is not to say that adoption is no longer growing, however it appears that the rate of that growth has slowed.” The industry’s mission to convert travel buyers in to advocates for serviced apartments has been very successful, but there is clearly more work to be done.