Hotel demand patterns have shifted dramatically across segments in the hotel industry. Leisure travel demand has kept many hotel businesses afloat while the industry waited on the return of business travelers and group bookings. Hoteliers operating in each of those segments were forced to make a raft of changes to deal with the changing landscape.

Speaking during a webinar hosted by the NYU School of Professional Studies Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, hotel CEOs described how those changes took shape.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts President and CEO Geoff Ballotti said one of the most impressive things he witnessed through the pandemic was the resilience of leisure travel.

"The leisure traveler has been replacing so much of what we lost back in March, April and May," he said, noting leisure demand is likely to be the primary driver in what could be a relatively strong summer season.

He said something hoteliers need to keep in mind is the profile of the typical leisure travelers has changed significantly over the course of the pandemic.

"That leisure traveler is much younger, much more novice and not taking as many trips a year as the leisure traveler that we were used to," he said. "And they're willing to get out there and have experiences, and they'll continue to do that throughout the summer and fall, suggesting that we all have to market to them in a different way and cast a wider net. Expand our marketing funnels to market to these folks."

He noted this group has less hotel brand awareness, which requires more outreach to win that business.

Pat Pacious, president and CEO of Choice Hotels International, noted the travel patterns for these guests are shifting to favor a longer length of stay, which in some cases has put hotels at a disadvantage compared to alternative-accommodations platforms such as Airbnb.

"In many cases, consumers are opting for these alternative models because they can't find that purpose-built accommodation for them that does drive that longer travel stay," he said.

He noted brands need to do a better job adjusting to that type of demand along with younger travelers' desires to have a closer connection with the communities surrounding hotels.

"Those are consumers that don't just want to get in and get out," Pacious said. "They want to go and experience the culture."

While business travel and group business at hotels are still mostly shelved for the time being, Remington Hotels President and CEO Sloan Dean said sales efforts for future group business have evolved significantly, incorporating more technology to more effectively reach meeting planners.

"We've evolved how we sell. We've evolved what we're selling, and we've evolved our contracting for what we're selling," he said.

That evolution has included "using video and 360-degree imagery in virtual tours" to showcase spaces to planners and partnering with tech providers who will allow planners to pick how a meeting space is set up without having to set foot in it."

He said what planners are interested in has changed, and that's necessitated more focus on outdoor spaces and changing food-and-beverage offerings.

"We have catering menus that are more customer-centric and are more purposeful in planning and sustainability rather than just a buffet experience," he said. "That's something we can hold on to [after the pandemic]. Quite frankly, it's more profitable and better for the customer."

Jim Alderman, CEO of the Americas for Radisson Hotel Group, said many of these changes were creeping into the hotel industry before the COVID-19 pandemic but the rate of transformation has been greatly accelerated in the last year and a half.

He said some elements will have to go back to at least closer to the way they were in the past, and that's going to require some careful planning for both brands and owners. One example is how brands offer breakfasts.

"A lot of people paying [for hotel rooms] don't necessarily want a bag of fruit and yogurt as a substitute for a hot breakfast, so we're trying to really decide where breakfast goes," he said, noting while some owners would like to see free breakfasts be a thing of the past, those who don't offer them are likely to suffer in customer satisfaction scores.

One pleasant surprise during the downturn has been the hotel industry's broad ability to maintain rates.

"We're up in rate over 2019 in a number of places where we are largely leisure-focused," he said.

He predicted the ability to maintain both rate and demand in the extended-stay segment will drive further brand and developer interest.

"I wish we had an extended-stay product," Alderman said.

Choice's Pacious said he's hopeful that banks will soon look at the hotel industry more favorably, as new hotel construction lending came to a screeching halt during the pandemic. But while the lender sentiment has been extremely poor, performance metrics are improving and there's plenty of capital waiting to find a home.

"The banks do have money to lend," he said. "They have to get it back out and get that capital to work."

And banks aren't the only source of potential capital.

"There's a huge amount of private capital that was raised expecting to have distressed asset sales," Pacious said. "We don't have distressed asset sales. We have assets trading almost back to 2019 levels and, in some cases, above 2019 levels in the right cities and the right brand segments."