From presidential politics to hotel management mergers and acquisitions, November and October saw a flurry of news that is likely to impact the broad hotel industry.
With that in mind, the Hotel News Now podcast network spoke with experts across disciplines to react to and explain the news of the day for hoteliers across the globe.
Here are some of the highlights from recent Hotel News Now podcasts.
Hotel News Now
With a second Trump administration taking shape, Andria Ryan, labor attorney and partner at Fisher Phillips joined the HNN podcast to unpack how the labor environment is likely to shift.
She said while there are likely to be business friendly shifts on overtime thresholds and at the National Labor Relations Board, immigration policy could be a detriment, and work visas could be harder to come by as lawmakers will pause expanding these programs to see how the new political situation plays out.
“I think the industry will likely suffer from that kind of mentality as the administration rolls that out,” she said.
As the recent earnings season wrapped up, C. Patrick Scholes, managing director of lodging and leisure equity research at Truist Securities, joined the Hotel News Now podcast, noting hotel real estate investment trusts saw an outsize impact from hurricanes and labor strikes.
"We saw a number of the hotel REITs take down their earnings numbers," Scholes said, referencing Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, Park Hotels & Resorts, Sunstone Hotel Investors and Host Hotels & Resorts.
After a wave of hotel management company mergers and acquisitions, Hotel News Now caught up with two hoteliers who'd previously gone through such deals to discuss the ins and outs of how they happen.
Former Chesapeake Hospitality and Remington Hospitality executive W. Chris Green shared how a continued shortage of high quality talent plays into these deals. He said that was definitely a motivator for Remington's 2022 acquisition of Chesapeake.
"It's hard to find 30 really great hoteliers at once," he said.
Prism Hotels & Resorts founder Steve Van noted there's an emotional element at play in these deals, especially for people who've built their companies from the ground up. His company was bought by Aimbridge Hospitality in late 2021.
"I didn't realize how meaningful it was until after we left because so many employees came up and said, 'That was the best time of our life, and it helped our family,'" he said.
On HNN's monthly check-in on the Asia-Pacific region, STR's Jesper Palmqvist discussed the hope that a short-term boost in China could be parlayed into a more widescale comeback.
"We had a great Golden Week," he said. "No doubt, people were traveling. They were going to places that we assumed they'd be going — a lot of those new and upcoming destinations and brands that made sense for them. ... And I suppose it had a similar kind of effect as the domestic stock markets had, even if less extreme, when the stimulus package came: big boost and then kind of back down again because it was for all intents and purposes back to normal quite quickly once it ended with that extended period."
Closer to home, CoStar's Emmy Hise and Randyl Drummer joined the podcast to take a deep dive into the trajectory of Seattle, a west coast market seemingly bouncing back more quickly than some of its counterparts.
"For a while, it was one of those least recovered hotel markets after the pandemic, and I would put into that bucket San Francisco, San Jose and Portland where it just took longer to recover," Hise said. "Now, Seattle hotel performance is booming. On a 12-month average basis, [average daily rate and revenue per available room] are at peak levels. By the end of the year, occupancy is expected to get above 70% again, and it's topping the charts in terms of growth, whereas the other markets that I mentioned are growing but still struggling and not having the robust hotel improvement that Seattle is showing."
The Upgrade
On the October episode of The Upgrade, HNN's Terence Baker spoke with Daniel Johansson, director of development and acquisitions Cheval Collection, about how serviced apartments is a sector that more investors are taking seriously.
“The beauty with the serviced-apartment product is that it suits short, long, business and leisure travel with an efficient operation and without the need to have several F&B outlets, meeting rooms, spa, et cetera, all of which are costly to build, staff-intensive and for most of the time have low profit margins,” he said.
Tell Me More
The regular crew for Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast — HNN's Stephanie Ricca, STR's Isaac Collazo and CoStar's Jan Freitag — were joined by Expedia group's Brandon Ehrhardt last month to dive into expected travel trends for 2025.
One of those trends is "Detour Destinations," which is the concept of finding a new stop near a major travel hub
"Think about Krabi, Thailand, as a detour for Phuket; Cozumel as a detour for Cancun; Santa Barbara and Ojai as a detour for Los Angeles," Ehrhardt explained. "There's a lot of alternatives, and there are so many travel accommodations today and so much selection that travelers are really starting to lean into that."
Next Gen in Lodging
Next Gen in Lodging's Omari Head caught up with the team behind Choice Hotels International's SOAR — Supporting Ownership Access and Representation — program to discuss how they work to expand hotel ownership for underrepresented groups.
Choice's Jacquelyn Peterson shared how there's been an increase in interest for hotel investments from women.
"We are the main decision-makers in a lot of other areas, and so [we're] now stepping into the entrepreneurship role where we're reaching new heights," she said. "With the upcoming presidential election, we could have our first female president, but with that being said, we make a lot of decisions for our families, friends, financial aspects, things of that nature, and so we're now starting to emerge and step into a lot of the entrepreneurial roles."