A weak summer lead into a difficult budget season for hoteliers, and CoStar News Hotels podcasts dove into those topics and many others in recent months.
Here are some highlights from the past month and a half of podcasts.
CoStar News Hotels
Waves of tariffs present a unique and complicated challenge for procurement in the hotel industry. Consultant Alan Benjamin pointed out that prices change immediately for hotel furniture, fixtures and equipment, unless the lag in pricing with consumer goods.
He said the tariffs announced on Liberation Day completely changed the landscape.
"Imagine you're a firm like ours that's doing 200-plus projects at a time, and every client wants their project repriced within 48 hours so they can tell their lender, their boss or whatever 'Hey, this is what it's going to cost now,'" he said.
Even amid a more difficult than expected summer travel season, Sage Hospitality Group Senior Vice President of Sales, Revenue and Distribution Strategy Priya Chandnani said she's proud of the hotel industry for holding strong on pricing.
She said revenue managers have learned from the mistakes of the past.
"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."
Pyramid Global Hospitality's Senior Vice President of Revenue Management Lori Kiel said the difficult summer has lead into a challenging budget season.
She noted revenue departments are on edge due to the challenge of forecasting in an unpredictable environment.
"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," she 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?"
First Hospitality's Jenna Fishel noted that revenue has seen an evolution in recent years with more companies embracing a commercial strategy structure incorporating that function with sales and marketing, and that's an evolution her company underwent.
“When I was in a revenue management role, it was very easy to look on the other side and point the finger, blame results on sales versus owning everything,” she said. “When I moved into the [senior vice president] role and oversaw sales, I quickly learned what a value all our sales team members are and what a big impact they have on the business, and it’s much harder than it looks.”
But the pace of change refuses to slow, and Olaf Belgraver, head of chains at Booking.com, joined the podcast to talk about what's driving change across the hotel industry.
That not surprisingly includes artificial intelligence, which he said represents "one of the biggest shifts that we see currently in travel since the internet."
AI agents "could be rebooking flights if there's disruptions, or adjusting our itineraries, and taking all the end-to-end steps without us necessarily having to intervene, and that's something that we really need to somehow prepare for," he said.
As the summer season winds down and hurricane season ramps up, hotel companies in many markets face significant climate risks, and Michael Chang, head of sustainability and resilience at Host Hotels & Resorts, said his company is constantly looking for ways to better mitigate those risks.
"Owning these hotels in highly desirable but climate vulnerable destinations really requires a sophisticated and nuanced approach to risk management," he said. "At Host, we don't view these locations as liabilities, but as strategic assets, requiring diligent forward-looking stewardship."
Even amid change, the latest edition of J.D. Power's North America Third-Party Hotel Management Guest Satisfaction Benchmark highlighted how guests still value many of the fundamentals, such as strong food and beverage, Andrea Stokes, hospitality practice lead at J.D. Power, said.
"Prices have gone up — not only room rates, but prices at restaurants ... when that happens, I think hotel guests have higher expectations," she said. "When you're paying more, you expect more, and you expect better food, better service."
During CoStar News Hotels' monthly check-ins on the Asia-Pacific region, STR area director for the region Jesper Palmqvist explained some of the dynamics playing out in Japan, which has been one of the hottest tourism destinations in recent years.
In the summer months, there was a slowdown for the country's growth pace but it remained strong.
"Our forecast still holds up quite well that the second half of the year is where large Japanese markets will be slowing down in their growth pace, but sit at unprecedented levels," Palmqvist said. "The fact that they have pretty good productivity, too. We know that their margins have stabilized in a lot of hotels, and so [it will be] much more about the how they manage their hotels operationally over the next 18 months."
Japan has been one of two major success stories in the region of late along with India, but Palmqvist noted there are "quite a few differences" in how those countries are realizing growth.
"But the biggest difference is Japan seeing, say, 15 million or 20 million arrivals and [India] being a domestic market, that's a huge difference," he said, while noting India is 10 times Japan's size.
Tell Me More
A "lackluster" summer seemed to unfold for the U.S. hotel industry beginning in June and the experts on Tell Me More unpacked what that data meant in real time.
Revenue per available room fell 1.2% in June, which STR Senior Director of Analytics Isaac Collazo described as the metric's "first significant decline of the year."
"It's the largest decrease of the year, and more importantly, the largest since March 2024," he said.
During a special live episode recorded at the 2025 Hotel Data Conference, Collazo noted this summer marked a shift from the slow growth of the previous couple of years to a noticeable decline.
And things look worse when rate growth is compared with the broader economy.
“What’s important about that 1.1% [year to date average daily rate growth], it’s almost 2.5 points below the rate of inflation. In fact, if you think about it that way, ADR has been below the rate of inflation for 19 of the past 24 months, and so that’s going to continue putting pressure on margins,” he said.
And in addition to the challenging macro-environment, hoteliers have had to cope with a negative calendar shift in August and September.
August in particular lost a Thursday and gained a Sunday, which marks a performance headwind.
"We're probably set to see the largest [revenue per available room] decrease since March of 2024, when it dropped by 2%," Collazo said.
Next Gen in Lodging
Eternal Companies founder and managing principal Damon Healey joined Next Gen in Lodging to talk about how he started in the hotel industry after working as a broader real estate investor.
He said he's found a niche for investing in economy hotels in secondary and tertiary markets.
“It’s all about the operation. It’s all about the basis you purchase it at,” he said. “They could do just as well as some of the primary markets because obviously the primary markets are going to be more expensive to purchase or develop in. So, it’s been like, ‘Hey, let’s not be shy about going into some of these secondary markets to get started.’”
Ramel Lee, managing partner at RD Lee Capital Partners, also joined the podcast to discuss the advantages of blind funds, noting they give better deal-making leverage.
"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.
The Upgrade
On CoStar News Hotels' Europe, Middle East and Africa focused podcast The Upgrade, STR analyst William Anns noted Southern European hotel performance continues to shine.
He noted events in particular have been a strong point across Europe, including major concerts and the women's UEFA football championships.
“The stadium capacity (for the football final in Basel, in which England beat Spain) was about 38,000 to 39,000, and the hotel supply of that area is significantly less than that, and so what happened was resultantly the occupancy for the night of the final was around 93%, an increase from 79% year-on-year, and the ADR was up 111%,” he said.