NASHVILLE, Tennessee — “Normalization,” at least in the U.S., continues to be the key phrase heard again and again throughout the 15th annual Hotel Data Conference.

At the final keynote presentation on key U.S. hotel industry trends, STR Vice President of Analytics Isaac Collazo left conference attendees with another phrase, perhaps a more calming one, “everything will be fine.”

Every time Collazo has looked at monthly commentary on the likelihood of recession, he said, “the recession has been pushed back a little more and lessened in impact.”

There might be checks and balances to this, of course. With no recession, or a very mild one, there will be more discernible income — and households earning more than $100,000 and $150,000 are growing — that might be spent internationally.

The share of luxury spending, meanwhile, is growing across the Atlantic Ocean, said Aoife Roche, head of commercial at STR.

It is not just leisure travel that appears to be healthy. Business travel is looking robust, too, and hoteliers are looking further out to “right-size and balance” their meetings, incentives, conventions and expositions bookings, said Chris Cheney, vice president of hotel performance and analytics at Stonebridge Companies, during a panel on business travel.

There is much to be thankful for in this industry. The year 2020 is only three years in the rearview mirror.

Now is the time for hoteliers to double down on differentiation and fine-tune strategy. Guests have choices, and the money to choose, but with demand for travel outpacing inflation — with the latter lowering by the month in the U.S. — there is also is much to be hopeful about.

Listen below as HNN's Sean McCracken and Trevor Simpson talk with Emmy Hise, STR's senior director of hospitality analytics, to recap the second day of the Hotel Data Conference.

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“When you thought about an Airbnb [in its early days] it was because it was less expensive to get a bigger place. But now, it’s just as expensive to go to an Airbnb, especially when you factor in huge cleaning charges. People are saying, ‘Well, if I’m going to spend that much money, I might as well go to a luxury hotel.’ And I think that’s part of the reason candidly that Airbnb is seeing a softening.”
— Steve Contos, executive vice president, Davidson Resorts, during the “Leisure’s longevity” session

“We’re not spending money on buying a couch. We’re spending it traveling to Paris.”
— Kelsey Fenerty, manager of analytics, STR, during the “Key trends” closing session

When will the wave of strong and steady leisure demand end? That was the central question of the “Leisure’s Longevity” panel to kick off Friday morning’s breakout sessions.

There was much back-and-forth among the panelists about Europe’s summer travel boom. Scorching summer temperatures certainly disrupted travel itineraries and canceled segments of trips. Davidson Resorts’ Steve Contos and Travelzoo’s Gabe Saglie agreed that Europe’s peak travel months are likely to expand earlier into the spring or later into the fall as tourists hope to avoid the crowds and sweltering heat.

“How many people said they’d never travel to Europe in July again? A lot, right?” Contos said. “If they can afford it, if they don’t have school-age kids, they’ll change their plans. Traditional non-peak demand times are becoming peak times.”

U.S. domestic demand is likely to rebound next year as the trip discounts become starker in comparison to Europe, panelists said. Yes, summer airfares from the U.S. to Europe were astronomical, but meal costs and taxi fares in busy European destinations were still quite affordable. Those prices won’t likely stay that way in Europe next summer, however.

So, while this summer might not have supplied the same record demand for U.S. beaches, resorts and mountain towns as compared to the summers of 2021 and 2022, hotel and travel experts anticipate the cyclical nature of demand will swing back in U.S. hoteliers’ favor in the years to come.
— Dan Kubacki, Production Editor
@HNN_Dan

Six months to go, six months to go! That might be the chant emanating from Europe, which is the part of the world I live in and write about. The industry has been saying for the past two years this is the period of time in which the Old Continent is lagging the New World, and we can hope.

Already, more U.S. and North American travelers are planning their vacations in European hotels, and luxury ones, so the evidence shows.

Audrey Kallman, operations analyst at STR, said at a panel titled “The Bottom Line Is the Bottom Line” that some “luxury hotels in Europe are seeing average daily rates of more than $1,000, and that is not being paid by Europeans.”

That shift in demand might balance out domestic U.S. demand without necessarily ADR declines as travel demand grows just about everywhere.

I'm amazed at just how quickly this industry has returned. It is almost unbelievable to warrant that only 40 months ago the industry was in a much worse position.

After the fear of COVID-19 had reduced, leisure travel was back with a vengeance — and now business travel is having the word “revenge” placed before it — and it has come back to unimaginable levels.

Now is the time to capitalize on that while improving guest experience, environment, social and governance and offerings.

Europe is not out of the woods quite yet, but things look rosier now than I would say even two months ago.
— Terence Baker, News Editor, EMEA
@terencebakerhnn

For an industry in the midst of "normalization," things certainly don't feel "normal." Now to be clear, this is not be pushing back on the idea that things are indeed normalizing. It seems like demand patterns from segmentation to day-of-week trends are all getting more like what we saw four years ago with each day, but we should still be quite a ways away from throwing up the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

A normalized hotel industry probably doesn't see a leisure-demand downshift because everyone who can afford it is going on a European vacation. A normalized hotel industry doesn't have a historically low level of financing available despite strong performance metrics.

In a weird way, the most normal thing about the hotel industry right now might be the fact that people are still worried about the potential ramifications of a recession, but if the projections are true, and the industry weathers the storm without significant impacts, growing revenues while the broader economic contracts, that would be decidedly abnormal.
— Sean McCracken, News Editor
@HNN_Sean

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