As we draw closer to the end of 2025, I can feel it in my bones. We're mere months away from the next wave of new year optimism.
Each January is marked by two things for U.S. hoteliers: The annual Americas Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles and a tidal wave of hoteliers saying that this year, unlike the previous year, will be the one where things really take off in terms of hotel performance.
Assuming that is true, it's interesting to me that years ago during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic there was a major conversation among hotel industry prognosticators about how long it'd take for things to truly get back to "normal." Back in 2020, only the biggest pessimists in the crowd had the nerve to say it could possibly take to the far-flung year of 2026, a year so far away it felt like the distant future setting of some sci-fi novel.
But here we are on the doorstep of 2026, and normal today still doesn't quite feel like normal in 2018 or 2019. Indeed, the primary discussion point in budget season for the new year seemed to revolve around hotel owners' impatience with the lack of certainty in forecasting that they've had to deal with since then.
And on top of that, 2026 doesn't feel like it's setting up to be the triumphant ramping up year of a new upcycle. The way the back half of 2025 is trending, I think a lot of hoteliers will be happy with positive revenue growth in 2026, not the mid- to high-single-digit growth you'd expect for a really strong period in the industry.
So that begs the question: Were the people regarded as the pessimists half a decade ago actually overly optimistic?
Now, this is the point in this blog where I'll admit that I'm probably recontextualizing those conversations and predictions in a somewhat unfair way.
And obviously, there were periods in the last five-plus years where specific regions and hotel segments had significant and sizeable rebounds. Given how bad things got in 2020, if that wasn't the case, hospitality would be well past crisis mode as an industry.
But at what point during that period were things firing on all cylinders? At what point did things feel like they're truly back to pre-pandemic normal?
Probably never, if we're being honest. And I don't think there's much hope that we're going to see that in 2026.
Now, 2027? Get ready folks because everything is really going to take off by then!
Let me know what you think on LinkedIn or via email.
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