Recent episodes of CoStar News Hotels podcasts have focused on how hoteliers are adapting to the shifting state of the industry and how technology is fueling that shift.
Here are some highlights from recent episodes of the "CoStar News Hotels" podcast.
Peachtree Group Managing Principal and CEO Greg Friedman joined the podcast to discuss how hoteliers can cope with the current lending environment, including the expectation that interest rates will remain higher for longer.
"New financings were slow over the last several years, and now it's starting to pick up because people — owners and investors of real estate — are starting to realize this is the new normal," he said, noting geopolitical tension and inflation are unlikely to allow for much in the way of rate cuts in the immediate future.
In the post-game recap episode for the FIFA World Cup, Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics at CoStar Group, and Peter Yeung, managing director of the Walker Hotels Collection in New York City discussed lessons learned from the month-long mega-event.
Yeung said his properties — the Walker Hotel Greenwich Village and the Walker Tribeca Hotel — saw occupancies north of 90% and a rate premium of more than 25% the weekend when East Rutherford, New Jersey, hosted the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina.
"Anytime you have a sporting event of this world magnitude, the excitement is electric in a sense that you have people from all different cultures and all different backgrounds celebrating the unity of a sport, and you can imagine the passion behind that. For people to travel maybe long distances, or even driving into the city and the area, is a commitment, and it's because of the energy that someone wants to be a part of," he said.
Ron Swidler, CEO of the Gettys Group, discussed how his firm is helping hotels and hotel brands adapt to the guests of the future.
He noted his company works with an AI startup called Vurvey Labs to try to do just that.
"They are using AI technology as a predictive tool for consumer products," he said. "They're working with Unilever and Procter & Gamble, and they're testing products with real people, then building up a database that is a combination of real responses and video responses from consumers who are testing these products — Dove products, Nike Shoes, Legos, et cetera — with their AI database. And they're putting those things together and saying, 'This is what's most important to consumers now, and this is what's likely to be most important to consumers later.'"
In the monthly check-in on the Asia-Pacific region, STR's regional vice president in the Asia-Pacific region Jesper Palmqvist said although there has been some talk of travel softening in China, overall the market remains strong.
"So I wouldn't flag [summer disappointment] as a major concern yet because remember in the last couple of months we're not losing anymore," he said. "Year over year, that has stopped. We're seeing some growth in some markets."
Tell Me More
In the July episode of "Tell Me More", STR's Isaac Collazo pointed out that non-World Cup markets in the U.S. saw a 6.8% revenue per available room jump.
Hotel demand displacement projections proved true, Collazo said. Analysts early on predicted traditional group business and even leisure travelers would avoid higher-priced World Cup cities this summer and instead choose other locations for their events and travel.
Then during a special episode recorded at the 18th annual Hotel Data Conference, Jan Freitag, CoStar's national director of hospitality analytics, said the next year should be "smooth sailing" from a revenue perspective.
Despite tough 2027 comparisons in June and July to this year's outstanding hotel performance, the U.S. should still notch revenue per available room next year.
The Upgrade
The maturation of the African hotel industry was the focus of the July episode of "The Upgrade".
David Damiba, managing partner and co-CEO of Johannesburg-based Kasada Capital Management, has witnessed the evolution of hotel investment and financing across Africa in career that has spanned decades.
“I’ve seen effectively 20 years of evolution in investment across Africa in the hospitality sector. … You’re looking at owners who might be fragmented as there are not too many institutional owners, but they tend to be sophisticated investors,” Damiba said
Next Gen in Lodging
Artificial Intelligence continues to be a major focus for hoteliers, and Andrew Pirret, senior vice president of customer experience at Alliants, joined "Next Gen in Lodging" to talk about how it can be used to elevate on-property interactions with guests.
"For us, we really want hospitality to be human," he said. "We think the future is people who can deliver on the intangible thing that's really hard to replicate — the something that your competitor isn't going to be able to reproduce."