“We see an acceptance … that there are no quick fixes and that the upturn will be a long, hard road.” That was the assessment of Damien Little, director at global consultancy Horwath Hotel, Tourism and Leisure. Little is the founder of the Horwath HTL Global Hotel Market Sentiment Survey, an index showing the relative pessimism or optimism of hotel operators worldwide.

Carried out every six months, the survey was conducted most recently in August 2010, and shows that while operating performance is on track, most hoteliers are not celebrating yet.

Horwath HTL assigns a sentiment number between -150 (indicating absolute pessimism) and +150 (indicating a very optimistic outlook) that is based on answers to questions in four areas: the performance of the hotel operator’s local market, the performance of the operator’s own property, the effect of various macro-economic drivers, and the effect on performance of four key market segments. In the most recent survey, Asia Pacific remained the most optimistic region with a score of 52. Europe’s score was 15, while the Middle East/Africa came in at 9.

Meanwhile, STR Global released global data for the year through August. Asia Pacific hoteliers have reasons to be optimistic, having the highest gains for the year in occupancy (up 11.6 percent), average daily rate (up 10.3 percent), and revenue per available room (up 23.1 percent).

The sentiment of the Europe and Middle East/Africa regions also was borne out by the data, with Europe up 5.4 percent in occupancy, 2.9 percent in average daily rate, and 8.4 percent in RevPAR, and the Middle East/Africa down -.5 percent in occupancy, up 3.6 percent in average daily rate, and up 3.1 percent in RevPAR.

Top Cities in 2010
In terms of occupancy, these were the top 10 cities outside the U.S. through August 2010:
1. London: 81.3 percent
2. Edinburgh: 77.4 percent
3. Tel Aviv: 76.4 percent
4. Glasgow: 75.4 percent
5. Paris: 75.1 percent
6. Amsterdam: 74.4 percent
7. Istanbul: 71.8 percent
7 (tie). Zurich: 71.8 percent
9. Vienna: 70.7 percent
10. Munich: 70.2 percent

Find STR Global’s latest worldwide hotel news and data at the company’s Web site.