As the U.S. moves into the fourth and final quarter of 2023, the long promised economic recession has still not arrived for the U.S. economy and there are still optimistic signs for hoteliers, according to STR's Vice President of Analytics Isaac Collazo.
In the latest episode of the Hotel News Now podcast network's "Tell Me More, A Hospitality Data Podcast," Collazo said early September has looked better than expected.
"We had kind of a soft summer ... not much softer, but softer than what we saw last year, but what we're seeing in September is really strengthening group, just like we expected," he said. "We are seeing group business much stronger, even with the religious observances happening in the month. We're still seeing very solid growth."
Jan Freitag, CoStar's national director of hospitality analytics, is "not quite as optimistic" but agreed that he's noticed a strong rebound in corporate group demand.
However, there's been a demand shift from leisure markets to more traditional top 25 cities such as Boston, Washington D.C. and New York, which are "all doing tremendously, well," Freitag added.
And Freitag reiterated that the negativity surrounding the public narrative for San Francisco doesn't match up with the reality on the ground.
"Clearly, not all is well, but things are absolutely better than the doom loop narrative would suggest," he said.
Artificial Intelligence
Freitag and Collazo hashed out what worries them and excites them about the possibilities for artificial intelligence in data and hospitality, and both agreed that development in that area is more of a positive than a negative for hotel revenue managers.
"I love this concept of a co-pilot," Freitag said. "This idea that you don't let AI take over, but you work side by side with a very, very powerful assistant and say, 'Hey, here's all the data. Flag for me all the outliers. Flag for me the trends. Tell me what I should dig into more.' And then the human can do that."
Collazo agreed, adding AI will be able to spot trends in data much more quickly and accurately than any human analyst.
"At this point in time, I think it's more of a supplement," he said. "I think it makes revenue management much stronger because it allows the revenue manager not to do the mundane things that machines can do much faster and quicker," he said.
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Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast from the Hotel News Now Podcast Network is available to download on Apple or Spotify, where you can also subscribe to future podcast content.