While 2021 will certainly bring challenges for hoteliers, industry leaders and experts speaking at the online Americas Lodging Investment Summit Winter Update expressed a sense of optimism as they head into a new year.

In separate interviews, Marriott International President and CEO Arne Sorenson, Hilton President and CEO Chris Nassetta, and Kathleen Taylor, chairwoman of Royal Bank of Canada and former president and CEO of Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, addressed the pressing issues the hotel industry faces.

The world is one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, with Western countries about 10 months in, and the tides will turn because of the development of vaccines, Sorenson said. However, the hotel industry is still in the eye of the storm as COVID-19 case numbers remain high in many places, he said.

This leads hoteliers to wonder how many more months this will last and when they will get some clarity.

“We know it’s coming,” he said. “We know we can be optimistic, but we don’t know whether it’s a couple of months from now or six months from now, and that’s the name of the game now.”

The bravest in the industry are planning for the future and bringing deals in for approval, Sorenson said. They’re likely not starting construction now, though a few on the margins may be as some markets are stronger than others. Overall, hoteliers and lenders are cautious.

“Because of the way this business works, there will be opportunities that exist and will be grabbed as that clarity comes to pass,” he said.

This downturn has been a tale of two economies, Taylor said. There are industries that have done well during the pandemic, and the stock market has performed better than expected, but several industries, including hospitality and travel, continue to struggle.

The recovery won’t be even, she said, but hotels have always been “a big heartbeat” for society, family, travel, exploration and gatherings.

“Those trends, long term, are going to be very robust and very strong,” Taylor said, adding people will figure out how to travel and work — not travel or work, as used to be the case for many.

New online work environments will open opportunities for many to explore, she said.

The focus now should be on providing the appropriate bridge to get to the other side of the pandemic, Nassetta said. After that, there must be federal stimulus to help everyone out of what started as a health crisis and turned into an economic crisis.

During the third and fourth quarters of 2020, the federal government wasn’t there in all the ways it could have been, he said. The new administration has a mandate to get the U.S. through the pandemic and revive the economy.

The pandemic has hobbled the hotel industry, particularly the ownership community, Nassetta said, adding it has been difficult to talk with the presidential administration about real stimulus.

“They keep talking about stimulus in one form or another, but it’s not real stimulus, the way we think about it to get people living again, because it hasn’t been an environment where that has made sense,” he said.

A bridge of liquidity is needed to get to the other side of the pandemic and then jump-start mobility and provide incentives for people to travel again, he said.

“The bulk of the unemployment now is in the service industry, it’s in our industry, and if we don’t solve that problem and get people moving again, we’re not going to get all these folks back to work,” he said. “I think this administration understands that, so I’m optimistic.”

Along with housing medical professionals and front-line workers, Marriott marketed its hotels as a place for people not only to stay but to work, using guestrooms as an office, Sorenson said.

“One of the things that will be interesting as we have more remote work, one of the huge advantages will be the further blending of leisure and business travel,” he said, explaining that a guest might stay for a week and have two or three of those days in which they are “out of the office.”

If two people are using that guestroom for work or a blend of business and leisure, adding amenities such as a second desk might be required, he said.

Hilton has been focusing a lot on hybrid meetings, Nassetta said. Common expectations that meetings business will be the last to come back after leisure and business travel are shortsighted, he said.

“We all are going to have to adapt how we do it,” he said. “It’s going to be an entirely different business model in the sense of being part physical, part virtual.”

Editor’s note: Hotel News Now is a division of STR, a CoStar Group company. Chris Nassetta serves on CoStar Group’s board of directors.