Here are some highlights from recent Hotel News Now podcast episodes:
August performance boosts summer hotel numbers
Summer U.S. hotel room demand was 390 million room nights between Memorial Day and Labor Day, making it the third-best summer since 2000.
On the latest episode of Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast, STR Vice President of Analytics Isaac Collazo explained how August contributed to this summer's success, with revenue per available room up 3.9% in the month.
Collazo's co-host Jan Freitag, CoStar Group's national director of hospitality analytics, spoke about the recent Federal Reserve interest rate cut and how it will impact hotel transactions.
Growth inconsistent across Asia-Pacific region
STR's Jesper Palmqvist said on the latest Hotel News Now podcast episode exploring data trends in the Asia-Pacific region that through nearly three quarters of 2024, there's been inconsistent demand growth across the different Asia-Pacific markets. He noted the three categories those regions encapsulate: markets experiencing declines in demand and rate; slow and steady market growth markets; and the clear outperformers.
Of the outperformers, Palmqvist said Japan and Vietnam are in the best shape to continue their growth trajectory.
"I think Japan will take a little bit of time for that slowdown at a national level because we still see that rate growth in Tokyo and Osaka and Kyoto to some degree," he said. "So that's going to continue a bit. I would expect Indonesia and Malaysia to soften a bit. Thailand will see something before peak season comes in because growth in peak is always going to be lower than growth in shoulder and low. You can have more impact. I think we'll see percentage gain is going to slow down in some of those markets there. Vietnam will keep going for a while, from that lower end, for sure. I think New Zealand and China will take a little bit longer, for totally different reasons there."
Oasis UK tour drives hotel demand
Brothers Liam Gallagher and Noel Gallagher brought the band back together and announced Oasis will definitely maybe tour the United Kingdom and Ireland in 2025 after a 16-year hiatus. Cristina Balekjian, director of United Kingdom hospitality analytics at CoStar Group, said on the latest episode of The Upgrade that both nostalgia and the fact that this could be the band's final tour is driving outsize hotel demand in the touring cities.
While the tour doesn't begin until July 2025, hotel bookings are already strong on nights of the tour.
“Places like Cardiff are at nearly 70% occupancy … and that is a year in advance, so that goes to show how much people want to attend,” she said.
How hoteliers prepare for hurricane season
Jamison Conrey, vice president of engineering, capital projects and risk management at Hospitality Ventures Management Group, joined the HNN podcast to discuss how he prepares his company's portfolio of 56 hotels for the hurricane season. Each property has an individually tailored plan in the case of a hurricane threat.
"The most important thing is having that preparedness, that emergency plan, together," he said. "That's something that I've developed over the years and put in a system that we use at all of our hotels that updates that document and is easily available to tailor it to their property," he said.
Experience 'only true differentiator' in food-and-beverage space
Coming out of the pandemic, hotel guests were open to spending more money to indulge in luxury experiences and products, but with it came challenges for hotel operators to meet the demand for heightened service and experiences, said Patrick Berwald, senior vice president of food and beverage at Pyramid Global Hospitality, on the HNN podcast.
Any given restaurant can offer a great dish, but the experience and storytelling that goes along with the dish is what sets it apart and brings guests back, he said.
“I think the opportunity is to really recognize the only true differentiator now is experience,” he said. “It's experience through storytelling. It's experience through learning and education. It's experience of guests trying new global cuisines or products or preparations.”
Unite Here president talks nationwide hotel strikes
Over the Labor Day weekend, more than 10,000 hotel workers across 25 hotels in nine cities went on strike, with thousands more joining them in the coming weeks. Unite Here, the union that represents about 100,000 hotel workers in the U.S. and Canada, encouraged workers to walk off their jobs.
Cade Watanabe, president of Unite Here Local 5 in Hawaii and co-chair of the ongoing national campaign, said on the HNN podcast that better care of workers is vital to "save our industry."
"The basis of our campaign has really been about not just making sure we have the economic improvements and wages to be able to live in the cities that we welcome our guests to, but also to provide the service, too," he said. "We're in the business of hospitality. We want to be able to do that. And part of being able to do that is we need staffing. We need workload concerns being addressed. We want to make sure that not only are workers like ourselves respected by this large industry that made over $100 billion in 2022, but also that our guests get what they pay for as well."
Summer demand tapers at national parks
U.S. national parks are starting to see demand taper off from pandemic-era highs, when visits to outdoor spaces were perceived to be the safer option.
Michael Darrow, general manager of Squire Resort at the Grand Canyon, BW Signature Collection for Delaware North, said on the HNN podcast that properties at national parks are still gauging what "normal" demand looks like now.
“Just like every other hotelier out there, we’re trying to figure out what the new normal is in terms of demand coming out of COVID,” he said. “You know, what’s the future going to look like for us here in the National Parks and elsewhere?”