NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Despite some U.S. hotel markets not scoring a goal during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hoteliers are tightening their operations strategy and are seeing some positive demand indicators for the rest of the year.
One major boost is that the number of households in the U.S. in which there is a combined income of $200,000 is increasing, and that segment now accounts for 36% of lodging spending, said Jan Freitag, national director, hospitality market analytics for CoStar Group, during the first day of the 18th annual Hotel Data Conference.
There are 2.3 times as many households with nominal income above that threshold as there were in 2018, which equates to approximately 11% of all U.S. households, he added.
With luxury hotels seemingly not having to worry about where demand and average daily rate are deriving or improving, this is good news for the chain-scale segments beneath that gilded level.
Hotel occupancy is increasing in segments and in many markets, and average daily rate has largely followed, but operating margins — particularly in hotel food and beverage are tight.
A holistic reappraisal of each hotel might be the way to move forward, loosen up margins and take more cash to the bank.
Here are some more highlights from the Hotel Data Conference.
Photos of the day
Slide of the day
Quotes of the day
"Distribution has become increasingly opaque, so channel information doesn't necessarily tell us the same as it used to years ago. ... I don't think it's that it's become harder to identify. But I think we're trying to categorize in the same way that we have in the last five to 10 years, when the traveler behavior has become a lot more fluid."
— Paula Weissend, senior regional director of revenue management, Pivot Hotels & Resorts
"In the past we thought the rise of an LLM platform allows us an even playing ground with an [online travel agency] partner. OTAs are way ahead of the game; they've invested highly effectively in that space and are very well on their way to being that authority for your hotel."
— Priya Chandnani, executive vice president of commercial strategy, Sage Hospitality, on the competitive landscape of hotel marketing in the AI age.
“The benefits of [U.S. city] convention-center upgrades take time to prove, [but] the smaller dogs want to be bigger, and the top dogs want to be massive”
— Chantal Wu, senior director of hospitality market analytics, CoStar
"I do have a bit of good news. If you'll stare out at the horizon just a little bit and squint, you'll see that inflation is almost certainly going to come down. It's not going to come down this month. It's not going to come down probably appreciably through the rest of the year, but if you look at 2027, we do expect it to come down."
— Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics