Travel's Reopening and Coronavirus Recovery

The Delta variant didn’t evade major hotel companies from profitability on their most recent quarter. Barring some massive pandemic setback, many of these optimistic outlooks are possible.

Finally, there’s some honesty about the hotel labor shortage crisis, and it doesn't just hinge on pandemic-related unemployment benefits.

Travel and tourism in the U.S. is breathing a huge sigh of relief today as vaccinated international travelers start their return. But as we've learned from Covid, the outcome will intertwined with an ongoing pandemic and persistent vaccine inequity.

This is a much-needed optics win for Hyatt, which hadn’t seen profitability during the pandemic like most of its competitors.

Given Choice’s significant demand base of leisure travelers, essential workers, and road warriors, it isn’t surprising that it will be the first major hotel company to eclipse 2019 performance levels. But it is certainly a bragging point.

It's a historic moment for the industry, with climate now sitting at the top of the global tourism agenda, even if many more stakeholders are yet to join the party. But rallying behind the climate emergency might just be the thing that resolves tourism’s many woes, everywhere.

Developing more innovative and stable sources of funding remains critical for this important, expanded destination management role to succeed. Some DMOs are on it, but many more continue to rely primarily on hotel bed taxes. Is the rapid return of travel dampening the sense of urgency?

It was still a strong quarter for Marriott, but the Delta variant weighed heavy on the company due to its greater exposure to China and reliance on big corporate travel contracts.

South Florida and California aren’t the only durable U.S. leisure hotel markets. Expect more investors like EOS to look for opportunities outside the traditional destinations most popular with hotel funds.

Hyatt’s focus on European growth instead of Asia looks like a smart call in light of the erratic recovery in China, where many of Hyatt’s competitors have focused their development pipelines.