NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Hoteliers across the country face a reset on how they present rates, following a trend that recently started in California.
The second day of the Hotel Data Conference kicked off with a deep dive into recent fee-transparency legislation in California that targets hotels specifically and how similar legislation is likely to soon be in place on a federal level.
During the "HDC Insights: What Hidden Fee Legislation Means for You" session, Troy Flanagan, the American Hotel & Lodging Association's executive vice president of external government affairs and industry relations, said a nationwide fee transparency law is likely to pass at the end of the year.
He added AHLA's ongoing goal is to make the adoption of new fee regulations as seamless and universal as possible.
"This is an event where the solution should be a federal solution, so we've been pushing on that for several years," Flanagan said. "We're getting pretty close."
Podcast Recap
Listen below as HNN's Bryan Wroten speaks with CoStar's Emmy Hise and CoStar News' Tony Wilbert to discuss what they heard on the second day of the 2024 Hotel Data Conference and to share their overall takeaways.
Photo of the Day
Quotes of the Day
"Let’s leave 2019 in 2019. Let’s start focusing more on what has happened this year and what we think is realistic to happen next year."
— Erin Cerrato, regional director of revenue management, McKibbon Hospitality
"Bifurcation is a good buzzword, but differentiation is where you need to be as independents."
— Harry Carr, vice president of revenue management at Davidson Hospitality Group's independent division Pivot.
"It should be name, phone number, email, Apple Pay."
— Gilbert Arredondo, senior vice president of revenue strategy at Remington Hospitality, on how online booking should be much simpler than many systems offer.
Editors' Takeaways
There's more people flying in the U.S. than ever. So given that's the case, why isn't this the strongest summer ever for the U.S. hotel industry? Anyone who has been paying attention to the overall industry trends so far this year can probably tell you it's the continued trend of more travelers leaving the U.S. than arriving in the country. European, Mexican and the Caribbean hotels are seeing a much bigger benefit from this historic wave of travelers.
I say all of this because I think it does fly in the face of the idea we're hearing a lot that the U.S. hotel industry is struggling because of increasing cost pressures on Americans. There are more traveling Americans than ever, and in fact, it seems like if anything the problem is their dollars are too valuable on a global scale. No one is rooting for a recession, but if one were to hit, perhaps those trends would flip if it became cheaper and more practical for global travelers to come to U.S. shores and more affordable for U.S. travelers to vacation domestically.
During the "What the International Inbound-Outbound Imbalance Means for Your Hotel" session, Tourism Economics' senior economist Daryl Cronk said international inbound travelers will return to pre-pandemic levels by next year, which represents an opportunity for U.S. hoteliers.
CoStar's director of hospitality analytics for Canada Laura Baxter said this will be vital.
"The [international arrival] recovery is imminent and expected to drive demand over the next five years as domestic demand stagnates," she said.
— Sean McCracken, news editor
The U.S. leisure traveler’s crown, which has sparkled brightly for the last three or four years since the end of the pandemic — set full of rubies, diamonds and sapphires or the red, white and blue of hotel demand — is set to lose its luster in 2025.
It will certainly not disappear, not by any sense, and many speakers at the Hotel Data Conference said Thursdays are heating up as a day in which there still is room to push ADR. But the return of group demand should be top of the agenda for revenue managers.
Another reason this is key is that corporate demand is the one notable source of demand that is yet to go to outbound, international travel and meetings, incentives, conventions and expositions business. Corporate groups are staying domestically, and that is a huge, somewhat untapped source of demand, and with back-to-office back to a percentage level that is high and likely to be close to its zenith, the number of meetings and other events is only going to grow in the upcoming months.
Overtourism is a concern in Europe — think Amsterdam, Barcelona and Venice — and communities there are acting against it and even in some cases protesting against vacation-makers. The strong dollar makes such places attractive, but with most travelers in the U.S. still traveling within 200 miles of their homes, the experiences, the good hotels and the renewed emphasis on personally meeting work colleagues all come together to offer U.S. hoteliers huge opportunities in 2025.
Then in 2026, there is the small question of the FIFA World Cup, and then it will be inbound tourism that US hoteliers would do well to target. There are attainable goals all around for the U.S. hotel industry.
— Terence Baker, news editor, EMEA
There was a discussion during the "Building a Profitable Distribution Strategy" panel that stood out to me. The panelists were talking about the need for guest data in the independent hotel space, but that often means making would-be guests fill out a lot of information during the online booking process, leading the guest go book somewhere else. They pointed to the ease in which hotel brands, through their loyalty programs, allow guests to easily book a room.
Jack Newkirk from Revinate was one of the panelists, and he recalled a conversation a former boss of his had with "an unruly executive chef."
"It is our job to make it easy for people to give us their money. Will you fall in line with this?"
While independent hotels get to enjoy all the freedom and flexibility of not being under a brand flag, that comes with the drawback of losing out on a big brand's marketing and distribution network. I'm curious to see what tech advancements will come in the future that make the booking process simple enough at every hotel that, as panelists pointed out, they can book a hotel with the ease in which people shop on Amazon at 11 p.m. while in bed.
— Bryan Wroten, senior reporter