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G6 Hospitality — which owns the Motel 6 hotel brand — has announced CEO Rob Palleschi is stepping down from his role and will be replaced on an interim basis by Chief Financial Officer and President Julie Arrowsmith. Palleschi will take over as CEO at student housing company American Campus Communities on Jan. 17. Both American Campus Communities and G6 are owned by Blackstone.

"It is a privilege to take on this additional responsibility as we position G6 for continued growth," Arrowsmith said in the news release announcing the change. "We have an incredibly strong team in place across the organization, and I look forward to continuing our work to support our franchise partners and deliver exceptional value for our guests."

With early signs that the Federal Reserve's efforts to tamp down inflation might be working, Reuters reports there's a possibility policy makers will shift to slow down future interest rate increases, although it's unlikely they reverse course or stop fully.

After a series of 50-basis-point increases in interest rates, some at the Fed have now publicly supported cutting future increases in half.

"Hikes of 25 basis points will be appropriate going forward," Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said, noting the target for rates is just above 5%.

Analysts who cover the publicly traded hotel companies said the first quarter will be especially strong for hotel performance, but there is plenty of reason to believe the rest of the year will be more challenging.

"Growing macro [economic] pressures could impact performance, and the expectation is that's probably a bigger impact in the back half of the year than the front half," Michael Bellisario, senior research analyst at Baird, said.

C. Patrick Scholes, managing director of lodging and leisure equity research for Truist Securities, struck a more optimistic tone overall, but agreed that the first quarter's numbers will be hard to match.

"You have a really easy [year-over-year comparison] in January and February, and that's a real positive," he said. "You're gonna see some really big numbers, and that's probably going to mask some of that weakness. Once you get through that, it's going to be harder."

The U.K. economy grew just 0.1% in November, but even that sliver of growth was enough to surpass expectations that gross domestic product would shrink, the BBC reports. The U.K.'s Office for National Statistics noted performance was boosted by both the tech sector and pubs and restaurants.

"Although the November reading of gross domestic product — a measure of all the activity by businesses, the government and people in the U.K. — was much better than anticipated, the overall picture still suggests the economy is stagnating as food and energy bills go up and people cut back," the news agency reports.

While we're still roughly a month out from hotel earnings season, airlines are beginning to report results, with Delta Air Lines beating profit expectations in the fourth quarter of 2022 due to continued strong travel demand, CNBC reports.

CEO Ed Bastian also told the news outlet that the company stood to benefit from Southwest's holiday meltdown.

“There was a lot of customers looking for airlines given some of the Southwest challenges, and we got a benefit from that,” Bastian said.

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