Data and analytics are not just vital in the contemporary hospitality ecosystem but also big business. CoStar's acquisition of STR shows the overlap between traditional commercial real estate and the global hotel market.
With so many hotel rooms in the pipeline, a turnaround of slower revenue-per-room growth in New York City is not expected until after 2020. It's a classic supply-and-demand problem, making it a delicate balance to get pricing power back in a city where tourism remains hot.
Even though every day with the new Trump administration seems unpredictable, early signs have convinced many in the hotel industry that this might just be the year that corporate travel rebounds from its 2016 slump. However, given the new executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, some executives throughout the travel industry may be rethinking their outlook on corporate travel.
You'd think having a hotelier in the White House would be a good thing for the hotel industry, but Trump's protectionist and xenophobic immigration and visa policies have the potential do much more harm than good, not only for his own hotel business but that of his peers, too.
The biggest conclusion here is that hoteliers can't afford to dismiss the impact, however large or minuscule it may be, that Airbnb is having on the lodging industry, and on their bottom lines, too. Plenty of reports may tell us different things, but the universal thread is that Airbnb is here, and it can't be ignored.
This report seems to suggest hoteliers don't have much to worry about when it comes to Airbnb but we're dealing more with apples and oranges here than apples and apples.
It's still a little too early to call this, but it's understandable why Airbnb and other alternative accommodations providers can have an advantage on peak nights: their supply is flexible, whereas the number of hotel rooms is not.
Following the state of the U.S. hotel industry is a lot like riding a roller coaster. Visualizing the constant changes through straightforward charts like these is one way to stay on top of things.