Editor's Note: Some linked articles may be behind subscription paywalls.
1. European short-term rental bookings rose in second quarter
In the second quarter, Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia reported travel consumers booked 245.9 million room nights in short-term rentals across Europe, according to Eurostats. It added that “the total number of guest nights in [the second quarter] increased by 17.8% compared with the same quarter of 2024 and by 36.8% compared with the second quarter of 2023.”
In the first quarter of 2025, Europe's most popular booking destination was the Canary Islands, where guests booked 8.8 million room nights, Eurostats added. Of the top 20 regions in the continent in terms of room nights, five were in Spain, including Andalucia, which saw 7.7 million room nights booked in the quarter, and Catalunya, which saw 3.9 million room nights booked.
2. Aethos Hotels announces new CEO
Zug, Switzerland-based Aethos Hotels has announced its new CEO as Lily Wecker, who arrives from her role as development director at Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Aethos has nine hotels in France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. Its single U.K. property, the 164-room Aethos London Shoreditch, just opened this week.
Wecker's role is to expand the firm’s strategy of expanding in Europe but also in the Americas and Asia. Benjamin Habbel, co-founder and chairman at Aethos — and founder and managing partner of Limestone Capital AG — said that Wecker “brings deep expertise in luxury hospitality, growth and development and a true passion for building meaningful connections.”
3. German Civil Service Association acquires Berlin hotel for €36m
The German Civil Service Association has acquired the 167-room Park Plaza Wallstreet Berlin Mitte from Union Investment for €36 million ($42.3 million) or approximately €215,600 per key. Hamburg-based Union Investment said the sale price “is significantly above the most recent expert valuation. Among other things, this is due to the expiring lease and the associated value-add potential.”
Madeleine Groß, head of investment management and hotels at Union Investment, said the sale was a strategic exercise and “serves to rejuvenate the portfolio of [its] open-ended real estate fund UniImmo: Deutschland.” The fund has owned the hotel since June 1992, according to CoStar.
4. US government begins shutdown
The U.S. government has shut down following the Senate failing to reach an agreement over this year’s budget. This is the first U.S. government shutdown since 2018. Politicians on both sides of the Senate are scrambling to reach an agreement, according to The New York Times, with thousands of federal jobs potentially at stake. The newspaper said, “a prolonged shutdown could erode investor confidence at a time when some analysts worry that stock valuations have gotten too high.”
On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump said the Democratic Party would be to blame if a shutdown occurred, warning that “we can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for [Democrats] and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out ... cutting programs that they like.”
5. Philippines’ massive earthquake follows in wake of typhoons and flooding
The Philippines has been hit by an earthquake that, so far, has killed more than 50 people, the BBC reports. Originating off the coast of the northeastern part of Cebu Island, the quake registered a 6.9 magnitude on the Richter scale. It also comes on the tail of several fatal typhoons that caused serious flooding from a wet monsoon season and riots and protests over allegations of political corruption.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology & Seismology said the “earthquake … may have been caused by a fault that had not generated a powerful tremor in the past 400 years.” Tremors were felt in Cebu City, which has a population of approximately 1 million and is the sixth-largest city in The Philippines.