Singapore beats London with more serviced residences for business visitors

London only has 1.2 units per 1,000 visitors.

According to OCBC, the supply of serviced residence (SR) units in Singapore is estimated to grow at 5.1% p.a. for 2012-2014 to  approximately 5,765 units.

Here's more from OCBC:

This is faster than the 4.8% p.a. rate at which the hotel room stock in Singapore is expected to grow at. While SRs accounted for 9.1% of the rooms and units available as of end-2011, given that their average occupancies are higher than that of hotels (91.8% versus 86.5% for 2011, STB), we estimate that SRs account for approximately 9.6% of the Singapore lodging market (in terms of nights stayed), with hotels accounting for the rest.

SG SR sector not saturated yet
We estimate that SRs have a 20% share of the HK lodging market. According to one of the largest European serviced apartment companies, The Apartment Service (TAS), SRs account for 30% of the Australian lodging market.

Against both markets, we see the potential for more growth for Singapore SRs, particularly versus HK – a close hospitality peer. TAS also indicates that SRs make up 8% of the US lodging market, significantly higher than that of UK’s (2%) and Europe’s (1%).

By these figures, we believe that the SR sector in Europe has significant potential for expansion.

ART exposed to the LT growth regions
Through ART’s properties in Europe and developing Asia, which respectively accounted for 38% and 25% of its portfolio by asset value as of 30 Sep, it has good exposure to what we believe will be the longer term growth regions for the global SR industry.

ART has emphasized that it continues to explore opportunities in Asia as well as London, Paris and key cities in Germany. We also see Europe’s SR industry as being relatively underdeveloped compared to those of the US, HK and Australia.

For instance, according to data from CBRE, the number of SR units per 1,000 annual business travelers is 1.2 in London, versus 1.8 in Singapore, 1.9 in NY, 2.6 in Sydney and 5.3 in HK.