It's time to unveil the 2025 CoStar News Hotels wrapped, podcast edition.
Below are the top episodes of the year from each show of the CoStar News Hotels podcast network.
Click each story to read more and stream the episode.
CoStar News Hotels podcast
1. How US hoteliers can prepare for the arrival of ICE agents
Under the direction of the presidential administration, the U.S. federal government has intensified its focus on arresting and deporting illegal immigrants and legal immigrants who have lost their protected status.
Many of those immigrants work in the hotel industry, so employers need to be ready for property visits from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other law enforcement agents, said Jessica Cook, a partner at law firm Fisher Phillips who has a specialty in immigration employment.
“They need to prepare,” Cook said. “The government is laser focused when it comes to immigration compliance right now, and we're going to see the worksite enforcement continue."
2. How hotel revenue managers are making sense of a complicated environment
This budgeting season for hotel revenue managers was especially challenging amid a year of worse-than-expected performance mostly across the board. Owners want better results next year in spite of larger macro-economic factors bringing down hotel performance.
"It's a little bit nerve-wracking right now because we are trying to get our forecasts shored up for the rest of the year so we can now do the budgets," Lori Kiel, senior vice president of revenue management at Pyramid Global Hospitality, said. "That's where it gets a little tricky, because, again, you weren't necessarily wanting to give up on the rest of the year because if this year has taught us nothing else, you can't bank on year-over-year trends, and you can barely bank on what's happened in the last eight weeks. So I think that's the part for me that probably gives me pause right now, is, how do you hedge those bets?"
3. Why revenue managers should feel proud
Even in a difficult demand environment, Sage Hospitality Group Senior Vice President of Sales, Revenue and Distribution Strategy Priya Chandnani said hotel revenue managers have a lot to be proud of, including their collective commitment to keep pushing rates.
"I think my favorite takeaway from today — and I think we should all do this in hospitality, we've learned this a number of times before — is to continue to hold on that pricing," she said. "Continue to hold on rate. We've seen this movie before. We've read this book before. Dropping rate does not trigger demand."
Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast
1. 'Recessionary' is a tough word
Back in September, co-hosts of the Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast Isaac Collazo of STR and Jan Freitag of CoStar Group sought to answer the question: "Are we in a hotel industry recession?"
August marked another month of average daily rate growth falling below the rate of inflation.
"Yes, the [U.S. economy] is bumpy up and down the food chain, and you have tariff impacts and the tax cut impact and immigration and all those conversations, but bottom line is continued growth of the American economy," Freitag said. "And then we're sitting here looking at our data and saying, 'Growth? What growth?'"
2. Unpacking 2026's top travel trends and destinations
Brandon Ehrhardt, vice president of supply marketing at Expedia Group, returned to the show to go through his company's Unpack '26 report.
Next year's trends include: hotel hop; readaways and farm charm; fan voyage; and set-jetting.
Set-jetting, the trend of travelers going to places they've seen in a show or movie, "is the Gen Z and millennial sweet spot. Eighty-one percent of those travelers in those demographics are looking for inspiration on the silver screen or TV," Ehrhardt said.
3. A decent month, all things considered
The U.S. government shutdown, which was the longest in the country's history at 43 days, didn't impact hotel performance in the month of October in a significant way.
Even though the shutdown caused some extra headaches in the traveling process such as flight delays and cancellations to accommodate for air-traffic controller staffing shortages, TSA data showed screenings were actually up 2% during the shutdown period.
"Folks aren't talking about that," Collazo said. "A lot of us were traveling during that time period — if you had to travel, you traveled, right? For business, we traveled. It was an inconvenience, but you didn't stop."
The Upgrade: EMEA Hospitality News
Oasis v. Swift, and other trends across Europe
Band of brothers Oasis reunited for a world tour in 2025, and the impact on hotel performance in the U.K. was on par with Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour," said William Anns, analyst at STR.
“The rates achieved during … Swift’s 'Eras Tour' last year was around £262 … but this year we know that when Oasis took stage that reached £326,” he said. “Taylor Swift actually had ever so slightly higher occupancy when she was in Cardiff, 96%, as opposed to 91% for Oasis."
Next Gen in Lodging
This hotel investor is flipping the script on fundraising
Ramel Lee, managing partner at RD Lee Capital Partners, was able to secure the initial capital for his fund's first acquisition and raised said funding before even deciding on the property he wanted to acquire.
He said on the Next Gen in Lodging podcast that he decided to do a "blind fund" because he thought it would give him better deal-making leverage during this period of a challenging transactions market.
"I was watching people getting hotels under contract, then trying to source their funding. And, my thought process was, 'Well, if I'm capitalized during the search, I can probably get better terms, because I'll be able to close quicker than people who'd have to turn around and raise their money,'" he said.
