8 Financial Themes Shaping the Hotel Industry in 2018 and Beyond
Photo Credit: A Create + Cultivate pop-up at the Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront hotel. To grow and survive as digital platforms, the big hotel chains are unequivocally moving away from the hotel owner model and more towards branding, marketing, and technology-related functions. Marriott International
Skift Take
After pouring over third quarter earnings results and investor calls, it’s clear the big hotel chains have embarked on a new, but potentially arduous road.
In the following piece, Skift Research Senior Analyst Rebecca Stone examined public hotel companies and cruise lines' financial results from the September quarter, and identified key financial trends that will help these industries' outlooks for the rest of 2017, into next year and beyond. Subscribe to our Research service to get deep these deep sectoral and company deep dives.
To grow and survive as digital platforms, the big hotel chains are unequivocally moving away from the hotel owner model and more towards branding, marketing, and technology-related functions.
In the long run, this should translate into accelerated global growth, sweeter margins, and cash flow from asset sell-offs, but it’s also uncharted territory in many respects. Being excellent at branding, ecommerce, and enterprise IT is a big job; competition is fierce on all fronts. Branding is a tricky business these days, especially for globally fragmented businesses, and the hotel companies will need more than
