The city that peaks in Ramadan

Hotel demand across most of the Gulf goes quiet in this month. That is the line in every seasonality chart, and for Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and Doha it is true. The leisure traveller stays away. The corporate traveller stops travelling. The terrace that was full in February is half empty and the rate card comes down.

Now look at the two holy cities in the same country. Their busiest weeks of the year are the ones about to start, the last ten nights, expected somewhere from the middle of this month depending on the sighting. Rooms within walking distance of the sanctuary are sold months ahead at the highest price they will reach all year. Jeddah carries the overflow: the airport, the hotels along the road, the shops a family passes through on the way in and on the way out.

So a national figure for Saudi Arabia in this month is two curves cancelling each other out. One of them is the deepest trough in the calendar. The other is the largest peak in the country's hospitality year, and it belongs to a customer, a category and a booking window that the trough has nothing to do with. Average the two and the month looks unremarkable, which is the one thing it is not.

I have watched plans built on that average. Media steps down for the month, staffing is reduced, the campaign is held until April, and every one of those calls is correct about four cities and wrong about the biggest thing happening in the market.

A national average is only useful when a country behaves like one place. Here it hides a peak inside a trough, and a number that hides a peak is worse than no number at all, because nobody argues with it.