We're only a couple of weeks away from the unofficial kickoff to the year for the U.S. hotel industry — the Americas Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles.
More so than most years, I'm going into that event with a pretty clear expectation for what I'm going to hear across the board, and it's not the hotel executive mainstay of feeling "cautiously optimistic."
Despite lingering concerns of an economic downturn — albeit an increasingly mild one — or layoffs in other industries, hotel demand continues to grow slow and steady. Things are good for hoteliers still, when many prognosticators assumed they'd have taken it on the chin by this point.
So my expectation? Less caution, more optimism. I think people will seize on the lack of a recession and no clear signs of an economic tailspin. They'll hold on to the comfort that comes from a more predictable environment than we've seen since early 2019, and they'll even point to the demand benefits of a presidential election year as reasons that 2024 will be a strong one.
I'm not saying I agree or disagree with any of that, but I would say if those projections end up being correct, we've reached full "normalization," which means we're only a year or two away from constant talk about how many innings are left in the current lodging cycle.
Now, I'll admit this is nothing more than what I'd consider an educated guess, and I could definitely be wrong. It would be pretty shocking if we showed up in California to hear a lot of doomsday talk from folks, especially since hoteliers are such a generally optimistic group. I'm pretty sure the chorus around the industry in the middle of 2020 was that things weren't actually that bad.
But more than most years, this will be an interesting time to track sentiment from conference to conference. By the time we touch down in midtown Manhattan in June, will expectations have cooled? Will the likelihood of a recession have shrunk to the point where hoteliers will be full-on jubilant? Will being stuck in Times Square be any less exhausting?
I'm confident the answer to the last question will continue to be "no."
Let me know what you think on Twitter, LinkedIn or via email.
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