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The Wall Street Journal reports the Federal Reserve has to balance cooling inflation and a possible banking crisis after announcing its latest 25-basis-point interest rate increase, which was already down from early projections of 50 basis points.

"In reality, these two jobs aren’t so easily separated," the newspaper reports. "Higher interest rates cool growth and inflation through a range of channels, one of which is raising financial institutions’ own cost of borrowing, causing them to lend less. The process usually plays out smoothly but sometimes violently: Banks or less-regulated lenders fail or come close to failing, assets crater and the public panics, whacking the economy more than the Fed intended. This is the origin of the Wall Street adage, 'The Fed tightens until something breaks.'"

In a series of interviews with Hotel News Now, leaders across the hotel industry shared their top lessons — both personally and professionally — from the three years since COVID-19 was officially deemed a global pandemic.

On of the big takeaways for Hilton's Chief Human Resources Officer Laura Fuentes, for example, was to recognize it's important to view "vulnerability as a superpower."

San Francisco-based KHP Capital Partners has purchased the 277-room The Camby Hotel in Phoenix for $110 million or just under $400,000 per room, CoStar News' Randyl Drummer reports. The property was converted from a Ritz-Carlton three years ago.

Seller Host Hotels & Resorts bought the hotel 25 years ago for $75 million. The deal marks the second highest amount paid for a Phoenix-area hotel in the past 12 months, trailing Braemar Hotels & Resorts' $268 million purchase of the Four Seasons Resort in Scottsdale.

Investors are betting on a Chinese outbound travel boom soon after that country has relaxed its travel restrictions, but money isn't flowing to airlines. Instead, investors seem to be favoring airports and hotels as targets, Reuters reports.

The news outlet reports investment groups seem to favor airports as real estate because they're less volatile than airline performance.

"Shares of airports, such as Airport of Bangkok and Shanghai International Airport have underperformed the big three Chinese airlines Air China, China Eastern and China Southern since the start of November, leaving room for further gains in the former," Reuters reports. "Investors say airline stocks are not only expensive, but their earnings tend to be volatile and susceptible to swings in oil prices."

The fallout from issues at Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank could have implications for commercial real estate lending that last months or years, the New York Times reports.

"Midsize and regional banks like Signature and First Republic not only provide the bulk of commercial real estate loans to businesses, they are also part of a far bigger market," the newspaper reports. "Banks typically package the loans they make into complex financial products and sell them to investors, allowing the banks to raise more money to make new loans."

“We were already in a place with a much lower rate of originations,” New York-based real estate lawyer Varuna Bhattacharyya said to the Times, referring to new loan applications that banks process. “It’s hard not to feel a bit of panic and anxiety.”

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