Home Inns & Hotels sees profits take off
0 
Nasdaq-listed Home Inns & Hotels Management's second-quarter earnings rose 36 percent on the economic recovery and increasing domestic travel.
The country's largest economy hotel chain reported revenue of 806.9 million yuan ($119.07 million), an increase of 25.7 percent year-on-year. Net income attributable to Home Inns' shareholders for the quarter stood at 135.8 million ($20.04 million), up from 100.4 million yuan ($14.82 million) year-on-year.
Supported by the economic recovery and increasing domestic travel, our overall occupancy rate for the quarter exceeded 96 percent (the number for the previous quarter and the same period of 2009 is 90.5 percent and 92.4 percent respectively) even as we put into effect price increases at the majority of our hotels, David Sun, Home Inns' Chief Executive Officer, said.
A key industry measurement, revenue per available room, increased by 15.5 percent to 171 yuan ($25.25).
China's tourism revenues from domestic travelers rose 20.6 percent in the first half to 605.5 billion yuan ($89.35 billion). China Tourism Agency predicted that the figure could reach 1.15 trillion yuan ($169.77 billion) for the year.
As of June 30, Home Inns operated 674 hotels across 126 cities in China, of which 390 were leased-and-operated hotels and 284 were franchised-and-managed hotels. In addition, Home Inns had 34 leased-and-operated hotels and 64 franchised-and-managed hotels contracted or under construction as of June 30. The company is shifting to more franchised-and-managed hotels because of high profitability and lower marginal cost.
Home Inns projected its revenue for the third quarter to reach between 875 million yuan ($129.12 million) and 895 million yuan ($132.07 million), a 20 to 23 percent year-on-year increase. It plans to build 195 to 205 new hotels this year.
Rival HanTing Hotels' second quarter earnings increased 185 percent to 79.7 million yuan ($11.76 million).
