The activity at Rafic Hariri International Airport improved in the first 11 months of the year despite a rough summer and holiday’s season and shy tourism during this period. Consequently, the number of Beirut’s International airport passengers went up by 70.91%, as it recorded 3.86 million (M) passengers in November 2021 compared to 2.26M passengers during the same period last year.
The breakdown of the airport’s statistics revealed that total arrivals added 79.68% year-on-year (YOY) to hit 1,827,442 million by November 2021. By the same token, the number of departing passengers climbed by a yearly 69% to reach 1,972,459 over the same period. Nevertheless, transit passengers decreased from 78,491 by November 2020 to 67,315 passengers by November 2021. We expect that airport passengers will increase during the month of December for the Christmas and New Year holidays.
In addition, data on occupancy as per E&Y benchmark survey revealed that the occupancy rate in Beirut’s 4- and 5-star hotels reached 42% by July 2021, up from last year’s registered 16% during the same period. Furthermore, the average room rate has increased by 347.1% from $191 in July 2020 to $853 in July 2021, which led to an upsurge in RevPAR (Revenue per available room) growth of 2,739.3% during the same period; from $23 to $648 in July 2021. Important to mention, that the increase is inflated by valuing the room rates at the official exchange rate of LBP 1,500 for USD, while the black market was approximately LBP/USD 19,000 in July 2021.
Beirut’s Airport Activity By November
