LIVERPOOL may not need any more city centre hotels for three years – despite record visitor numbers for the first seven months of 2011.

That’s the message from a study of the city’s hotel market that will be released today.

The Liverpool hotel sector has been transformed in recent years with the opening of hotels such as the Hilton in Liverpool One and Base2stay in the Ropewalks.

Today’s report, Liverpool Hotel Futures, says investment in the hotels sector has been a “real success story” for Merseyside. A total of 28 hotels have been opened since 2001, adding 3,000 new hotel rooms to the city’s offer.

But it says the city’s hotel market now needs a “period of consolidation”, while the market adjusts to the increased capacity those rooms offer, before more development starts after 2014.

And it says that the budget market will soon be so full, with several hotels already built and others under construction, that further budget hotel development “is unlikely to be needed before 2020”.

Hotel Futures, written by consultancy Hotel Solutions, was commissioned by tourist board The Mersey Partnership (TMP) with the support of Liverpool Vision and Liverpool City Council.