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1. Inflation Holds Back Business Travel Rebound
The Global Business Travel Association has pushed back its timeline for returning to pre-pandemic levels of business travel, citing inflation and labor shortages, Reuters reports. The GBTA now expects business travelers to rebound by 2026, roughly 18 months later than previously expected.
Spending on business travel increased 5.5% year over year to $697 billion in 2021, which is still significantly depressed compared to the $1.4 trillion recorded in 2019.
"The factors impacting many industries around the world are also anticipated to impact global business travel recovery into 2025," GBTA CEO Suzanne Neufang said in a statement. "The forecasted result is we'll get close, but we won't reach and exceed 2019's pre-pandemic
2. Electra Buys Boston Loews
Electra America Hospitality Group announced the company has bought the 225-room Loews Boston Hotel, HNN's Bryan Wroten reports. While the company didn't announce a price for the deal, CoStar data shows the property in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood sold for $116.65 million.
Electra officials plan to convert the property to the Hotel AKA Back Bay.
This marks Electra's sixth hotel deal in the past 18 months.
3. Price Per Room Jumps in California Hotel Transactions
The latest edition of Atlas Hospitality Group's California Hotels Sales Survey shows that while the number of individual hotel sales in the state dropped 9.9% year over year and total dollar volume fell 33.6%, the median price per key in deals rose 12.7% to $143,443, HNN's Bryan Wroten reports.
The survey tracked 263 sales for a total volume of $3.49 billion.
“The sales have cooled off a little bit from the record pace that was set in the first half [of last year], but it still came in as the second-highest number of individual sales and the third-highest total dollar volume in that six-month period,” Atlas President Alan Reay said.
4. CoStar Data Shows Bid-Ask Gap Closing
A new analysis of hotel transactions data by CoStar's Jan Freitag shows discounts to original listing prices have been lower over the past five years compared to the 10-year average.
"This can be interpreted in two ways: Either sellers and listing brokers were better at judging prevailing pricing sentiment or buyers have been more eager to transact and not as concerned with discounts than in the past," Freitag wrote.
5. Food Workers Announce Protest at San Francisco Airport
Hospitality workers' union Unite Here announced members of Unite Here Local 2 have voted to approve a strike at food-and-beverage outlets at San Francisco International Airport, according to a news release. Workers also planned to stage a protest Thursday afternoon at the airport.
Union members voted 99.7% on Aug. 10 to authorize the strike, citing a push for better wages and health care. While the union has approved a strike, officials note the planned protest is not a strike or work stoppage.