Here are the top stories from the Daily Lodging Report newsletter in the past week. Get news on hotel deals, development, stocks, and career moves. Sign up here now.
25.08.2023 - 13:14 / skift.com / Rashaad Jorden / Sean Oneill / G.Adventures
Good morning from Skift. It’s Monday, July 17. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
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Some hotel executives have expressed concerns about the security and reliability of today’s generative artificial intelligence. However, industry experts are confident that AI will make room pricing more profitable, reports Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill.
Former IHG executive Jeff Edwards said revenue management would be the perfect use for the technology because it is too complex for humans to manage in real-time. Future tech could also enable dynamic pricing for individual rooms. O’Neill notes an extra-spacious room appearing frequently on social media could, in theory, command higher rates. Ryan King, an executive at hotel software services firm Shiji Americas, said revenue management software platforms could assign specific rates for certain rooms based on perceptions of those rooms.
O’Neill also writes that today’s revenue management systems often struggle to handle non-room revenue, including spending in hotel restaurants and spas.
We head to San Francisco next. Global Tourism Reporter Dawit Habtemariam writes the city’s struggling downtown is holding back its tourism recovery.
Although some neighborhoods outside of San Francisco’s downtown have seen an increase in visitors, Habtemariam reports several tour operators aren’t enthusiastic about taking groups to the center of the city. One tour operator, G Adventures, said it now starts tours in Las Vegas instead of San Francisco and that it has reduced the time its tours spend there. Another tour operator said he avoids group trips to the city.
Local officials recently launched a global marketing campaign called “Always San Francisco” in an attempt to counter the city’s negative reputation. San Francisco Travel Association Chief Marketing Officer Lynn Bruni-Perkins said the organization wants to remind the public that the majority of visitors to the city last year said they wanted to return.
We finish today in India, the host of the Cricket World Cup this fall. The country is racing to have budget hotels ready for the start of the event in October, writes Middle East and Asia Reporter Amrita Ghosh.
The rush to provide cricket fans more budget accommodation options comes as event organizers expect to see an enormous demand for tickets. Budget hotel operator Oyo said it will add 500 hotels in host cities to its portfolio over the next three months. An Oyo executive said the hotels will be located near tournament venues. In addition, India-based online travel company MakeMyTrip has unveiled plans to increase its inventory of homestay properties during the cricket season.
Here are the top stories from the Daily Lodging Report newsletter in the past week. Get news on hotel deals, development, stocks, and career moves. Sign up here now.
From today’s Daily Lodging Report newsletter: Nikkei Asia published an article on Hilton planning to expand its luxury offerings in Asia. Hilton will be bringing its Waldorf Astoria brand to Malaysia, Vietnam, India, and other countries for the first time as part of its plans to open 25 new luxury hotels in the Asia Pacific region over the next few years. That’s up from the 33 luxury hotels it currently runs in the Asia Pacific.
Here are some excerpts from Daily Lodging Report from the past week. If you’re not a subscriber, you should be. Get news on hotel deals, development, stocks, and career moves. Sign up here, now.
Good morning from Skift. It’s Monday, December 5. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Here are some excerpts from Daily Lodging Report from the past week. If you’re not a subscriber, you should be. Get news on hotel deals, development, stocks, and career moves. Sign up here, now.
Good morning from Skift. It’s Monday, December 12. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants is a boutique hotel brand created by Bill Kimpton in 1981 in San Francisco. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) bought it for $430 million in 2014 and has been scaling it up as a mid-priced lifestyle brand.
Flynn Properties and Värde Partners said on November 21 they had created a joint venture that had acquired an 80 percent interest in 89 select service and extended stay hotels.
A pent-up surge in consumer demand for travel gave many hotel companies pricing power in 2022. But hoteliers charged the highest rates the market could support for more than just one-off circumstantial reasons. A critical ingredient in the formula was that hoteliers developed a newfound pricing discipline during the pandemic recovery — even when business travel was historically weak and international tourism was slow to recover in many markets.
Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) plans to reach a portfolio of 300 hotels by 2025, it said on Tuesday when reporting its earnings.
Sales of hotel rooms are booming post-pandemic. But market turmoil will likely put most dealmaking for hotel assets on hiatus for the first half of the year.
Here are some excerpts from Daily Lodging Report from the past week. If you’re not a subscriber, you should be. Get news on hotel deals, development, stocks, and career moves. Sign up here, now.