Shares in hotels group Hilton were back under pressure today after the bomb blasts in Turkey dealt another blow to the troubled sector.
Hilton stood at the top of the FTSE 100 Index fallers board with a drop of 5%, while InterContinental Hotels and Millennium & Copthorne were also lower.
The group, which has two hotels in Istanbul – including one near the blast site – earlier issued a mixed trading update from its portfolio of 402 hotels.
It reported encouraging signs from its UK, Middle East and Asia Pacific hotels.
But it added that key Continental European cities and the Nordic region remained difficult, with any sustained recovery proving “elusive”.
Hilton’s Ladbrokes betting and gaming division proved more buoyant, with the gross win in its UK shops ahead by 6% in the year so far.
That strong performance helped gross profit in the four months to 31 October to increase 15.1%, the company added in a trading statement.
The hotel arm’s gross profit performance was weaker than the same period of 2002, although Hilton said it had been encouraged by a year-on-year improvement in revenues per available room (revpar) since August.
The growth was strongest in the Middle East region, where revpar improved 11% in October and by 31% in the previous month.
In the UK, October revpar was down 1.7% on a year earlier after posting a positive performance in September.
During the most recent four-week period, London four-star and properties in the provinces struggled despite growth of 3.6% in London five-star hotels.
In August, Hilton posted a 15% fall in underlying profits after its hotels suffered from the impact of the Sars virus and the war in Iraq.
The Watford-based company said group profits before tax, one-off items and goodwill dropped to £110.5m in the six months to 30 June.
Profits from its hotels fell by 42.6% to £56.1m.
References: EGi News 20/11/03
