The Americas Lodging Investment Summit is just days away, and it's a great opportunity to get a real reading for how hoteliers are feeling this year.
As we turned over to a new year, most of our reporting shared optimistic takes on where things are going.
Rate growth is slowing, or even dipping a bit, not because of problems with demand but because rates are normalizing after hitting such highs. Interest rates are supposed to come down, which would make hotel transactions and development less expensive, helping clarify hotel valuation and narrowing the bid-ask gap.
Hotel brand companies launched multiple brands last year, not something you would see if executives were feeling pessimistic about the future.
Not everything is rosy, though. The U.S. Travel Association just shared that its forecast for international inbound and business travel demand is still down compared to pre-pandemic levels and won't return as fast as previously hoped.
The other way to look at that is as strong as the industry is performing now, there's potential future demand growth headed this way.
It all depends on your take on the metaphorical glass of water.
But as I was saying before, we're headed to ALIS early next week and will have a chance to see and hear firsthand from hoteliers where they think they're headed.
At past conferences, we heard plenty of "cautiously optimistic" takes when things were still going well but everyone was worried about a recession. We saw a lot of optimism coming out of the pandemic, and I distinctly remember the muted/humbled sense of recovery when the delta variant (I think) put the mask mandate back in place temporarily.
We have a bunch of interviews lined up, a mix of our traditional written profiles and video interviews along with our newest format: podcasts. Shameless plugs aside, make sure you check out the three shows in the Hotel News Now podcast network: Hotel News Now, Tell Me More and Next Gen in Lodging. They're available through articles posted on our website as well as for download through Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you see the HNN crew around the conference, make sure to say "Hey" and share your barometer reading for yourself, your company and/or the industry.
You can reach me at bwroten@hotelnewsnow.com as well as LinkedIn.
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