Ernst and Young’s Middle East Hotel Benchmark Survey revealed that Beirut’s hotel occupancy rate increased by 21 percentage points (pp) year-on-year (y-o-y) to stand at 56% in September 2014. This caused Revenue per Average Room (RevPAR) to rise by 61.9% y-o-y to $89. The improvement in Beirut’s hospitality sector was attributed to the Lebanon Water Festival, which involves activities such as diving, water skiing, swimming, sailing wind-surfing and boating, and which attracts many professionals from abroad. Average room rate (ARR) witnessed a slight y-o-y increase of 2%, reaching $158. Over the first 9 months of 2014, Lebanon’s occupancy rate has declined by 2 pp to 50%. ARR and RevPAR also dropped by 4.2% and 8.5% to respective values of $162 and $81. Regionally, Cairo (Egypt) continued its recovery in the month of September from recent political and security difficulties. Stabilization of security and renewed prosperity have led to an increase in Cairo’s occupancy rate by 25 pp y-o-y, up to 42%, with an increase in ARR by 45.3% y-o-y to $98. Consequently, RevPAR has leapt from $12 to $42. Contrastingly, Kuwait witnessed the worst performance in the region for September regarding occupancy rate, with a y-o-y decrease of 12 pp to 52%, and RevPAR, which dropped by 8.1% to $130. As for ARR, Dubai witnessed the biggest drop, with a 7.1% y-o-y decline to $201.