Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, October 25, 2024, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
23.10.2024 - 14:11 / skift.com / Sean Oneill
As hotel groups vie for dominance in the lucrative extended-stay sector, Choice Hotels has emerged as a leading player in the economy and midscale segments. The franchisor said on Wednesday it had opened its 500th extended-stay property.
America’s hotel companies have been investing heavily in extended stays. In the past two years, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and Wyndham have been rolling out extended-stay brands to capture what they see as long-term demand. However, longer-term players like Choice Hotels and Extended Stay America say they have some competitive advantages.
The big picture: Choice Hotels is betting mostly on properties that function more like apartments than hotels, targeting blue-collar business travelers and project workers rather than traditional hotel guests. The group had nearly 400 hotels in the pipeline across four extended-stay brands: Everhome Suites, WoodSpring Suites, Suburban Studios, and MainStay Suites.
Driving the news: Choice has gone from 100 to 500 extended-stay hotels in only six years.
Between the lines: Choice Hotels’s strategy differs from competitors in a few ways, McElhare said.
“We’ve doubled down on really investing in being the leader in what we would call kind of ‘true extended stay,'” Matt McElhare, vice president and extended stay segment lead, told Skift.
What’s next: Choice Hotels is exploring automated check-in kiosks and remote overnight support systems to further optimize operations, with potential launches in 2025, McElhare said.
What am I looking at? The performance of hotels and short-term rental sector stocks within the ST200. The index includes companies publicly traded across global markets, including international and regional hotel brands, hotel REITs, hotel management companies, alternative accommodations, and timeshares.
The Skift Travel 200 (ST200) combines the financial performance of nearly 200 travel companies worth more than a trillion dollars into a single number. See more hotels and short-term rental financial sector performance.
Read the full methodology behind the Skift Travel 200.
Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, October 25, 2024, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sara van Geloven, freelance editor and project manager. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Accor raised its profit outlook after luxury hotels and the Paris Olympics helped drive growth, even as the French hospitality giant grappled with weakness in China’s domestic market.
The world’s largest hotel franchisor is seeing resilient demand for leisure and business travel despite economic uncertainty — even at the budget end of the market. Wyndham’s third-quarter results highlighted the benefits of having a heavy mix of hotels and resorts in the economy and midscale segments.
The New York City Council on Wednesday passed a hotel licensing bill that has sparked an intense debate between supporters who claim it will improve safety and working conditions and opponents who argue it will hobble the hotel industry.
Hilton reported record hotel openings and development activity in the third quarter.
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) saw strong momentum in its expansion efforts in the third quarter. The hotel group added 17,500 rooms across 98 hotels, more than doubling its growth pace from the same period last year.
Google has long let hotels buy ads at the top of its search results. Yet these paid ads have only shared generic, static information about a property. Google said Monday it had changed that by allowing hotels to add “rich data” — such as real-time rates, images, and user-review star ratings.
Hilton president and CEO Christopher Nassetta believes the hotel group’s focus on traditional hotels and lodging and mostly “organic” growth gives it an edge over competitors expanding into cruises, vacation rentals, and other categories.
A hotel in South Lake Tahoe is making it easier to plan for an epic mountain stay with an unlimited pass during ski season.
When most people think of Hyatt Hotels, they think of either luxury hotels (like the Park Hyatt Tokyo in the movie “Lost in Translation”) or urban business hotels (where your corporation’s annual holiday party takes place).
New York City's luxury hotel scene just keeps getting better. And next spring, the city will welcome one of the trendiest hotel brands of them all: Faena.