Future of lodging tips

Dolly Parton has been in the news for releasing a new record and a new book. We’re focused on the launch of the new hotel she co-owns, Dollywood’s HeartSong Lodge & Resort.

Choice Hotels is preparing to nominate multiple directors to Wyndham Hotels & Resorts‘ board in an aggressive move to push its approximately $9.8 billion unsolicited merger bid between the two U.S.-based hotel companies.

This was the year the short-term rentals  industry saw it all — the good, the bad and the ugly.  

Sonder is sharpening the focus on its hotel business and adding more units while managing its portfolio of apartments. 

Airbnb, Booking.com, and Expedia Group have agreed to share data with the UK’s Office for National Statistics by spring 2024.

Saudi Arabia’s Neom project has announced yet another region – Epicon. Similar to Leyja, announced last month, Epicon consists of just a handful of hotels and restaurants. Located on the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, Epicon includes two hotels, along with a residential project.

Vacation rental property manager Vacasa has been plagued by the same problem for multiple quarters: homeowner churn. 

Choice Hotels International said the organic growth of its development pipeline is healthy despite claims it has recently relied on growth by acquisitions instead.

Hilton Grand Vacations has offered to acquire Bluegreen Vacations, two publicly held vacation ownership companies said on Monday.

At the start of the year, Sortis Holdings said it would acquire Ace Group International, owner of Ace Hotels, for $85 million in cash. Now the deal is off.

Ambuja Neotia, a real-estate developer and operator in Kolkata, has bought Tree of Life Resorts and Hotels, a collection of 14 boutique hotels across India with about 200 rooms that Skift recently profiled.

Hyatt has bet more of its future on China than any other Western hotel group. It has 40% of its hotel pipeline there — a greater percentage than the hotel development pipeline of any public company in its peer group.

Marriott International‘s executives reported strong revenue growth in the third quarter on Thursday. They forecasted a steady pace of revenue expansion that would return it to its historical 10-year average after the pandemic disruption.

IHG Hotels & Resorts recently rolled out a function that allows guests to find and book rooms based on certain attributes, a project it says has been years in the making.

Accor issued rosier forecasts for full-year results and its 2024 outlook on Thursday on the strength of better-than-expected performance this year at the Paris-based hotel group.

Wyndham’s executives talked at length Thursday about why they wouldn’t accept the unsolicited bid from Choice Hotels – a $9.8 billion buyout offer after assuming debt.

Scandic Hotels Group has posted its third-quarter results today, with a $49.9 million net profit (559 Swedish krona) and a level of indebtedness that continues to shrink.

Hilton reported results on Wednesday that suggested a boom in U.S. hotel bookings after the pandemic has begun to run its course while surging reservations at Hilton’s international hotels appear to be compensating.

We know out-of-town fans of Taylor Swift have boosted tourism in major cities in 2023. Beyoncé has her own power to lift hotel bookings, too. Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour dates in Europe and the U.S. overlapped with better-than-usual performances at hotels near her venues. That’s according to a market impact analysis of Beyoncé on the hotel sector that CoStar’s STR released on Tuesday.

The talk of last week in Hotel World was Choice Hotels‘ hostile buyout offer for Wyndham, an offer Wyndham quickly rejected.

IHG’s third-quarter results on Friday show the group is starting to benefit from the domestic travel resurgence in China, seeing improvements over 2019 for the first time in four years.