Hotels.com: Hotels, Prices for hotels in the U.S. and Europe fell sharply

One of the leaders of the world online hotel booking market - portal hotels.com - published the results of price research in the hotels worldwide. According to data obtained during the research, a tendency for price abatement still remains in hotels around the world.

Hotels.com named the city in the United States with the cheapest hotels. The lowest prices in the United States today are offered by hotels of Albuquerque, the largest city in the state of New Mexico. These are the valid activities for September 2009.

The research, which was conducted hotels.com, has dealt only with major U.S. cities. Hotels in Albuquerque were the cheapest ones among all the participants of the rating. Room prices in the city in average fell by more than 10% compared with the last year. Today, a room in a hotel in Albuquerque will cost an average of $ 79 per night.

Among the cheapest U.S. cities for tourists in addition to Albuquerque portal hotels.com named Reno, Boise and Las Vegas, which hotels also showed some of the lowest prices for their rooms. Thereat, Las Vegas, as well as New York, was among the most popular destinations of international tourism in the United States.

The overall view of world prices for hotels, according to hotels.com, demonstrates a price abatement - much more rapid one than in Albuquerque. In general, the cost of rooms at hotels in the world has declined by a total of 17%. Now the prices of hotel rooms in the world are at the same level as in January 2004 - the year when hotels.com first used its own system of assessing the level of hotel room prices.

As a result of the global financial crisis, the prices for hotels in Europe only in the second quarter of 2009 fell by 16%. At the same time, during the first half of 2009 hotels in St. Petersburg reduced the room prices by almost 30%, hotels in Oslo - by 32%, hotels in Milan became 22% cheaper. The most dramatic decrease was observed in the hotels of Moscow. According to hotels.com, average prices in hotels of Moscow decreased by more than 50%, compared with the first half of 2008. The only European region, which showed a rise in hotel prices, was the Greek island of Capri. Here the cost of rooms increased by 12%.

Hotel Price Index – is an indicator which hotels.com uses to reflect the situation in today's hotel business. When calculating the composite rating hotels.com uses its own database. Today the database of hotels.com contains about 78 000 hotels in more than 12 000 cities and resorts around the world. The rating of hotels.com differs from other similar ones by the fact that the portal doesn’t use an average room price for calculations, but the price, which is actually paid by guest when booking a hotel room.