The pall in the air surrounding the near-term future of the hotel industry for the first half of 2025 has unsurprisingly centered around the disruption caused by one word: tariffs. It’s led to erratic travel behavior making forecasts less predictable, the reshuffling of international flight routes (mostly into and out of the United States) and lots of investment dollars in a wait-and-see pattern that we so often call "dry powder."
All this uncertainty reached a climax at the beginning of the month where the mecca of U.S. hotel investment conferences — the annual International Hospitality Investment Forum (IHIF) Americas, in partnership with New York University — took place in none other than the mecca of finance, New York City, perennially held at the 1970s brutalism behemoth that is the Marriott Marquis overlooking Times Square.
While attending this prestigious conference offers incredible networking opportunities and innumerable sessions with powerful insights on industry trends, what made this past outing of NYU IHIF such a critical landmark on the yearly calendar of events was how well the speakers deconstructed then dispelled our collective tariff anxiety through a few poignant macro statistics while offering clear guidance on how to navigate these turbulent waters through prudent investment strategies.
Altogether, the 2025 edition cemented this conference as not just "a" but "the" beacon of hope that hospitality needs at this particular moment, and it should be top of mind for attending next year’s event. While much has already been journaled on the play-by-play of this event’s happenings, hereafter, we’ve broken down three key long-term trends as observed and coalesced from several sessions, to interpret and use as your discretion.
Erratic but still essential
The peak experience from NYU IHIF was none other than the late afternoon roundtable featuring the capi di tutti capi (“bosses of all bosses” to borrow a term from New York’s Italian mafioso history): Geoff Ballotti of Wyndham, Sébastien Bazin of Accor, Tony Capuano of Marriott, Mark Hoplamazian of Hyatt, Elie Maalouf of IHG and Chris Nassetta of Hilton.
Amidst all the various industry trends and geopolitical events that these powerhouses touched upon, what’s important for context in their discussion is that these individuals have access to THE data. Each house of brand’s loyalty system offers a treasure trove of first-party and zero-party data spanning thousands of hotels in nearly every country around the world. Moreover, each executive lives and breathes hotels, working each day with owners and operators to tacitly understand the multifaceted nuances of hospitality, therein giving them both a quantitative and qualitative edge over third-party sources.
In other words, every sentence said has earthshaking ramifications. So, when this group collectively agrees that travel is now deemed as an essential aspect by which people of all walks define their lives, this by itself means that total travel numbers are only moving in one direction over the long run.
That is, it’s a bumpy road. What they have observed is that while tariffs have massively jumbled pace and other year-over-year travel forecasts, last-minute bookings are way up.
In other words, while 2025 may not see an uplift in hindsight, the total decrease in revenue on the books may be far less than what a three-months-out pace report may suggest. This phenomenon is attributed to the general uncertainty in the air combined with the new age seamlessness of booking last minute as enabled by hotel technology and real-time distribution networks.
The implications for hotels are legion, but above all is the need for nimbleness. Trust that travel will continue to proliferate and evolve while also developing processes for being able to react on a moment’s notice to sudden shifts in the environment.
Lifestyle drinks your milkshake
Much has already been said and dissected regarding Starwood Capital Group's Barry Sternlicht’s shrewd remarks on how upstart, bespoke brands will steal market share from the major chains over the coming decade. This deserves repeating ad nauseum as it points directly to the core mission of hospitality.
During his one-on-one fireside chat, Sternlicht mused on how small, nimble retail brands have used the power of the internet and social media — "new media" in other words — to gain rapid scale at inordinate speed. Specifically, he cited the rise of skincare brand The Ordinary in stealing market share from industry titan Estée Lauder.
Within the hotel world, a similar seismic shift is occurring under the guise of various terms such as lifestyle, boutique, laidback luxury or mission-driven hospitality. Harnessing these new media as well as democratized, cloud-based technologies; independents; small groups; and collections that elicit truly meaningful experiences for their guests will now have a fighting chance right out the gates against the multinationals.
To pull one quote in particular from Sternlicht to get you excited about this prospect, “It’s good to be in an industry that’s good for the world.”
Therein lies a guiding principle for creating a brand with meaning: The mission for hotels is to break down barriers by allowing people to experience other cultures. Fitting perfectly with this year’s conference theme of engagement driving returns, however the hotel industry evolves and segments, it will favor those brands with a strong mission of helping connect people.
And wellness for all…
While wellness and longevity were hardly a central topic for NYU IHIF, it’s nevertheless remarkable that many keynotes alluded to the dawn of the "silver economy" and its multitrillion-dollar opportunity for hotels through wellness productization.
To paraphrase Maalouf, who put it succinctly during the CEO roundtable, people are retiring healthier and wealthier than ever before, creating a generational trend unseen in recorded history whereby many will be living until the age of 100 and still on their feet.
These individuals can travel any time or all the time, thereby feeding any midweek occupancy needs while also creating space for further growth in burgeoning categories such as serviced apartments or upscale extended stay as well as the other travel-as-identity growth for lifestyle or aspirational brands.
This megatrend also explains, in large part, the resilience of luxury travel because the distribution of wealth highly correlates with distribution of age. Bazin even quipped that’s why Accor is working toward a $10,000 per night room with the Orient Express relaunch.
Overall, as better medical practices reach the masses and wellness lifestyles are adopted, people are increasingly looking for what’s perceived as "high value for money and time" experiences, as witnessed by the increased spending on activities and dining with many brands now gauging total revenue per available room growth as the true marker for business success.
During the closing minutes of his session, Sternlicht also mused on what’s ahead for the silver economy, noting that we are conservative in our estimates of the costs of medical care, while the exponential increase in life extension and preventative medicines have both yet to fully be factored into our modeling.
An opening keynote noted that travel will soon represent roughly 12% of global GDP for around $16 trillion. But given the profound implications of the silver economy’s impact on total travel numbers and demand for specific segments, these numbers may be far too low.
Undoubtedly, we’ll be seeing plenty more data and statistics about this skyrocketing trend in future outings of NYU IHIF. But ahead of any retrospective confirmations, as the Romans would say: fortune favors the bold.
As a final note, we dislike the labeling of this megatrend as ‘silver’ because this word implies that hair graying is unidirectional. Recent studies are teasing out the precise cellular mechanisms underpinning hair follicle depigmentation as well as offering both treatments and lifestyle strategies for prevention and, perhaps, reversal. We prefer the more optimistic term "the longevity economy" … yet one more beacon of hope from these jampacked two days in New York!
Adam and Larry Mogelonsky are partners of Hotel Mogel Consulting Ltd., a Toronto-based consulting practice. Larry focuses on asset management, sales and operations while Adam specializes in hotel technology and marketing.
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