Edinburgh remains at the top of Colliers International’s latest UK Hotels Market Index, with a strong active pipeline and performance, largely due to consistently strong occupancy and average daily room rate levels in 2018.

The city has also seen a robust four-year upward revenue per available room trend and continuous strong market appetite.

The UK Hotels Market Index is an analysis of 34 locations across the UK, ranked to determine the hot spots for hotel development and acquisition across the country.

Belfast ranks second, moving up one place, predominantly as a result of continued strong performance and low building costs.

This has fallen away a little in 2018 due to a large increase in supply but a great deal of the new pipeline is now open so Colliers would see this stabilising again over the coming years.

The active pipeline is now only 6.5 per cent of the current supply, compared to a significant 33.9 per cent in the previous year.

Liverpool is positioned third, improving its ranking by eight spots.

This is mainly due to strong growth in both occupancy and average daily room rate, resulting in the highest four-year RevPAR trend, combined with improved market appetite and relatively low land site prices.

Remarkably, Plymouth and Oxford have fallen out of the top ten.

Oxford, despite recording strong RevPAR levels in 2018, has increasing land costs which affects its ranking.

Plymouth, on the other hand, experienced a decline in RevPAR in 2018, which has largely been attributed to strong growth in Airbnb and alternative accommodation sectors as a result of a shortage of hotels.

Marc Finney, head of hotels and resorts consulting at Colliers International commented: “Overall the UK hotel sector is in rude health.

“Operating performance is holding up well in most UK markets and London continues to perform well. 

“The UK hotel market adds about 10,000 new rooms each year and this has increased in pace recently with almost 18,000 new rooms expected to open in 2019.

“This leaves hotels as a rare bright spot in a property market which is facing challenges in other sectors.”