Travel & Data Trends

In an industry focused on amenities, scaling down can be shockingly innovative. Especially when you remove almost everything and get the basics exactly right.

Hospitality has always been about how people feel, but over the last decade or so, the industry tried to improve that feeling through structure alone. Better systems. Better standards. Better efficiency. The assumption was that if everything worked smoothly enough, the emotional experience would naturally follow. And what we are seeing now suggests the opposite.

Read the latest edition of the HVS ANAROCK monthly industry update, MONITOR (Monthly Overview of National Industry Trends and Hospitality Report), for the key trends in the Indian hospitality industry.

The 2026 ALIS Conference made one thing clear: the hotel industry is navigating an unusual moment where capital is plentiful, deal flow is scarce, and the operating landscape is rapidly and constantly shifting. Optimism was evident but grounded, marking a clear move beyond post‑pandemic enthusiasm toward more practical, disciplined thinking.

Now firmly in the back half of the 2020s, one megatrend that we’re all aware of is how the experience economy has caused a mushrooming of luxury hospitality. There are now innumerable brands in this space, so much so that to wrap our heads around it we’re niching luxury into traditional, experiential, uber, ultra, wellness and other modifiers.

Colorado Springs has long stood as one of Colorado’s most popular drive-to leisure destinations during the peak summer months. Government entities and related contract business have also supported strong lodging dynamics. While disruptions within the government segment over the past year have resulted in uncertainty for the near term, the long-term outlook remains optimistic.

The hotel sector in Minneapolis–St. Paul continues to evolve and recover from pre- and post-pandemic oversupply and demand changes. Leisure and event-driven travel have returned with renewed energy, but not yet at the scale needed to fully offset the region’s corporate travel losses.

It’s been the recent talk of the industry. We’ve been sensing it for a while, and now it’s getting clearer: AI is slowly but surely disrupting online travel discovery, search and possibly booking. Markus Busch recently broke this down in one of the better hotel industry pieces I’ve read lately. And Thomas Reiner has an excellent take as well. Here’s my take (which is a slightly more detailed version of the post I shared).

The 2026 Guest Experience Benchmark reveals a hotel industry that continues to mature under pressure. Despite record tourist arrivals in several regions, guest satisfaction continued to rise. This matters because volume growth often strains service delivery. Yet the data shows that hotels are coping better than ever.

If you run an independent hotel or B&B, you know what it means to wear too many hats.