I’ll admit that I’m one of those suckers who every single time gets drawn in by a “best of” headline.
Best songs of 2015? Why yes, I will give that a listen. Best movies of the year? Sure, but it’ll just make me feel guilty because I haven’t seen half of them. Best books? OK, that’s more my speed. Best memes? Now we’re talking.
By mid-December it’s tough not to have a touch of best-of list fatigue, and we’re even guilty of it here at HNN—we’ve been sharing our top articles from the year all month, and later this month and in early January we’ll have a couple additional collections of great articles from the year organized by theme.
But I never tire of best-of travel lists. It’s always fun to see Travel + Leisure’s annual World’s Best Hotels list. And on the flip side, just this week we all saw the headlines about a certain Hollywood celeb’s hotel receiving the dubious honor of being named to a “worst luxury hotels” list (I’d link you to the list itself, but the company behind it requires membership, and I don’t think I’m quite luxurious enough to belong).
By the time the end of this month rolls around, you’ll have dipped into your fair share of best-of lists, so I’d like to share a couple forward-looking lists that have come my way recently that you might find interesting, fun and helpful as you look ahead to 2016.
Andrew Freeman & Company’s annual trends report for food, beverage and hospitality
This annual outlook is hands-down my favorite for identifying the perfect mix of trends we recognize in hospitality and F&B (sliders, anyone?) and trends so out there they leave even the most cutting-edge among us scratching our heads (small-batch … flour? Who knew!). This year the team at AF&C dub 2016 “the year of multiple personalities” in hospitality, so that will leave hoteliers with plenty to interpret moving forward.
Don’t miss the hotel trends section of the report, which identifies a couple cool and interesting trends we’re starting to see more of, such as the rise of tiny guestrooms and the hostel resurgence.
Baum + Whiteman’s “11 hottest food & beverage dining trends in restaurants & hotels, 2016”
The international food and restaurant consultants every year identify a couple emerging trends that they say will weave their way into F&B concepts in the coming year. Topping the 2016 list? Technology. Yes, technology as an F&B trend. What’s interesting here is that a lot of what B+W identify as tech food trends are what we’re seeing in hotels, too—lots of interacting with management via tablets and social apps instead of face-to-face interactions, and so on.
Sherwin-Williams 2016 Colors of the Year
Yes, Pantone gets a lot of credit for identifying its singular (or in this year’s case, there’s two) color of the year, but I like the Sherwin-Williams color forecasts because they’re a bit more comprehensive. Next year’s Sherwin-Williams color of the year is alabaster, and the company offers a lot of tools and different collections of colors based on themes, styles and more that’s pretty translatable to hospitality.
Infographic of the week
Have you ever wondered what the Star Wars movie franchise has in common with the hotel industry? No, I can’t say that I have either, myself. But we’re all about recognizing trends and analyzing them here at Hotel News Now, so we can’t let this week’s big premiere go unrecognized.
I turned to my STR Analytics colleague and infographic nerd (not to mention bona fide Star Wars geek) Steve Hennis to help me out this week. In turn he created what might become the definitive benchmarking tool for hotels and lodgings in a galaxy far, far away. So in the spirit of the film franchise gripping the world, we bring you the inaugural Galactic Hotel Review, because you just never know what’s happening in the outer reaches of the galaxy:
Click here for full infographic.
I asked Steve for a little color commentary on what we can expect from lodging performance in these parts, both on the leisure side (I hear Endor’s nice this time of year) and on the business front (all those Imperial Forces have to sleep somewhere). Here’s what he had to say:
“Resort destinations lead performance growth for 2015, with Yavin and Naboo seeing the largest gains. With construction booming throughout the galaxy, the strength of the steel industry has driven demand on Mustafar. On the dark side … err, rather, the downside, declining oil prices have hurt the hotel industry in Bespin, while an Imperial invasion on Jakku has negatively affected demand. Moreover, Coruscant continues to struggle with ADR performance as government spending remains in check.”
I asked about the hotel industry outlook for 2016 in these parts and he said, “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”
If you’d like to drop Steve a line to tell him how much you geeked out over this infographic, email him at shennis@stranalytics.com.
As always, if you want to share comments about this blog or anything else we do here at Hotel News Now, drop a comment below, email me at sricca@hotelnewsnow.com or find me on Twitter @HNN_Steph.
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