The arrival of a new year gives hoteliers the opportunity to look back at the year that was and look forward to the year that is yet to be, and that's what many recent CoStar News Hotels podcasts did.
Here are some highlights from recent podcast episodes.
CoStar News Hotels
Like many recent years, 2025 was an active one for global real estate investment firm City Developments Limited. David Ling, global head of hospitality investments and asset management for the Singapore-based company, joined the podcast's monthly check-in on the Asia-Pacific region to discuss the company's recent hotel investments.
Those deals included both buying and selling with the £280 million ($375.9 million) purchase of the Holiday Inn London — Kensington High Street and the 14 billion yen ($88.3 million) sale of the Bespoke Hotel Osaka Shinsaibashi.
"It was not our intention to sell the Bespoke Osaka Shinsaibashi," he said. "I [wouldn't] dream of selling it within two years, but someone walked in with a big check."
CoStar News Hotels also asked an array of hoteliers to look back on 2025 and give one word that best described the year. Answers tended toward focusing on the fact that the year was relatively difficult, with word choices including "resilience" and "uncertainty."
"We price every night, and we adjust to the market," Access Point Financial CEO and Chairman Michael Lipson said of his choice "resilience." "We've been able to adopt, adapt and evolve and continue to push forward. So next year will be a better year."
One piece of advice on the hotel lending environment in the new year is to not try to time out interest rates, said Jared Schlosser, head of originations and C-PACE at Peachtree Group. Overall, Schlosser believes 2026 will be a good year for "strong borrowers."
"I think for well-thought-out acquisition, business plan deals, for solid cash flow, for performing deals, for strong borrowers who continue to do what they say they're going to do, there's ton of liquidity," he said, noting that "on the flip side of that, you're seeing a lot of deals that are struggling."
The labor environment is also likely to see some changes in 2026, and some of those are based on the U.S. federal government's approach to labor law.
Sylvia St. Clair, partner in the labor and employment group at law firm Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, joined the podcast to unpack some of the biggest changes, including how the government looks at joint-employer issues.
A recent opinion letter focused on a hostess from a hotel restaurant and whether she could collect overtime for working at different food-and-beverage outlets on one property that operated as different legal entities.
“They said that what they look at is not necessarily corporate formalities, but instead they look at shared management and ownership,” she said. “They looked at the fact that the hostess was working in both locations. There was some type of coordination in scheduling. There were similar/identical rates of pay. In all essence, they were operating as one entity.”
SCP Hotels co-founders Pam and Ken Cruse joined the podcast to talk about the latest wellness trends, including their company's focus on "wild wellness" at their 10 properties.
"Wild wellness is a perfect opportunity for us to take advantage of the spaces and places that we already have and not complicate things," Pam Cruse said. "Back to basics is getting out and into nature, standing in the grass, getting in the ocean."
Tell Me More
In the final episode of the Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data podcast in 2025, CoStar's Jan Freitag and STR's Isaac Collazo unpacked how data can help make sense of a challenging and confusing year for hoteliers.
Difficult year-over-year comparisons hung over the end of 2025 due to the 2024 hurricane season, and that cast a pall over the end of the year.
"And to give a heads up to people, we are expecting [the fourth quarter] this year to be down," Freitag warned. "We expect December to be negative. So that's going to give us three consecutive quarters of [revenue per available room] decline. And because of that tough comp in [the first quarter] of 2026, we expect Q1 to be slightly negative in RevPAR."
The Upgrade
The U.K.'s November budget made some major economic changes, including lowering the salary threshold for employer contributions to National Insurance.
Bridget Baker, veteran hotel and hospitality consultant and owner of Bridget Baker Consulting, joined The Upgrade, CoStar News Hotels' EMEA-focused podcast, to help unpack what those changes mean.
“My biggest concern is the impact on young people. I live in a tourist town (Brighton), and in the past, you could walk into any job … in a café, in a nightclub, in a bar,” Baker said.
Next Gen in Lodging
The hosts of Next Gen in Lodging got together to debrief the year, describing 2025 as a "shake-up" year.
Christopher Henry, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Majestic Hospitality Group, said he took solace from the fact that hotel development was showing life near the end of the year.
"I think a lot of things were almost like putting the martini shaker and shaking it around on every level of business and society," he said. "I hope some stability and progress is made over the next 12 months."