New travel trends are on the horizon for 2025, which is a good thing since U.S. hotel performance this fall has suffered a bit of a slump.
On the latest episode of Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast, hosts Isaac Collazo and Jan Freitag welcome special guest Brandon Ehrhardt, vice president of supply marketing at Expedia Group, to the conversation to talk travel trends and the data supporting them.
But first, Collazo and Freitag unpacked September's U.S. hotel performance data, which was underlined by a 1.3% drop in revenue per available room compared to last year. That was attributed mostly to September 2024 having one fewer weekend than September 2023.
"We lost one weekend and picked up an extra Sunday and Monday, and therefore that's what makes the difference" in a positive RevPAR month versus one that loses steam, explained Collazo, STR's vice president of analytics.
And while Collazo said U.S. hotel average daily rate continues to grow below the rate of inflation — another ding to the data — it's all still part of a level-set back to normalization.
Freitag, CoStar Group's national director of hospitality analytics, acknowledged that the September data "gives a lot of industry observers heartburn," but he pointed out a positive. Average daily rate in urban locations was up 3.6% in September, due in part to "continued, healthy corporate transient and some group demand," he said.
Luxury hotel demand continues to be another bright spot — it was up 10% in September — though luxury rate growth is slowing, Collazo said.
2025 travel trends
Discussion about the resilience of higher-end leisure travel teed up special guest Ehrhardt, who shared highlights from Expedia's Unpack '25 report, which identifies travel trends for the coming year through a survey of 20,000 travelers around the world.
Ehrhardt, Freitag and Collazo talked about four of the trends from this year's report:
- Detour Destinations: "Think about Krabi, Thailand, as a detour for Phuket; Cozumel as a detour for Cancun; Santa Barbara and Ojai as a detour for Los Angeles," Ehrhardt explained. "There's a lot of alternatives, and there are so many travel accommodations today and so much selection that travelers are really starting to lean into that."
- All-Inclusive Era: This trend calls for all-inclusive resorts — particularly higher-end ones — appealing to more younger travelers, Ehrhardt said. He attributes the rise in searches for all-inclusives on Hotels.com to travelers — many from Gen Z — wanting a simplified all-in stay that still ticks the boxes for fun, high-end travel. "People don't want the stress of having to plan it themselves," he said. "They just want it simplified."
- Set-Jetting: The travel trend of visiting locales made famous by TV shows and movies — think "Emily in Paris" or "Game of Thrones" — is only getting more popular, Ehrhardt said.
- Hotel Restaurant Renaissance: Unpack '25 data shows that travelers will choose hotels based on signature restaurants, and also on related experiences related to those restaurants, Ehrhardt said. He cited that 31% of travelers said they prefer hotels with exclusive restaurants that allow special access for hotel guests, for example.
Also in this episode
- Year-to-date room demand percent change is zero, Freitag said. "We're selling as many rooms as we did a year ago. ... so that's really not a great number."
- Collazo talks luxury hotel ADR, pointing out Austin, Texas, notched the highest in the country the week ending Oct. 19, thanks to lift from an F1 Grand Prix and the University of Georgia at University of Texas at Austin college football game. Rates in Austin surpassed rates in Miami and Fort Lauderdale for that weekend, notable since that market hosted a series of Taylor Swift concerts.
Referenced in this episode
- Expedia Group's Unpack '25 travel trends report
- Related Hotel News Now podcast: Hilton's 2025 trends report anticipates the rise of 'travel maximizers'