Over the past decade, Sacramento has seen strong economic growth, driven by investment in the Downtown and Natomas submarkets. Fueled by rising costs in the San Francisco Bay Area, businesses and individuals have migrated inland toward the more cost-efficient Sacramento Valley. With several major commercial developments in the works, Sacramento should experience sustained growth in the near term.
Earlier this week I was talking to a regional commercial head of Asia for one of the world’s largest hotel chains and the view forward into 2024 is one of concern, to say the least.
I was asked by my team to provide insights from the road, what I’ve seen, and what trends and challenges are looming on the horizon. I joked that I needed to dust off my crystal ball, but in reality, the only prediction I feel comfortable making is that the Green Bay Packers will not make it to the Big Game this season (wink, wink.) What I can do is provide a look at some industry challenges I’ve seen this year that will continue into 2024.
India’s trillion-dollar wedding industry is back, larger and grander than ever before. Fueled by rising income levels, a growing number of high-net-worth individuals, and the charm of celebrity weddings, destination weddings, both domestic and international, are on the rise, which is expected to gain further momentum driven by India’s favorable demographics. Read on to know more.
Europeans first settled in the city that would become Charleston over 350 years ago. Charleston’s rich history is one of the drivers of its thriving tourism sector, which tallied 7.68 million visitors in 2022. In the hospitality industry, Charleston continues to make history, while local initiatives are also making strides to preserve it.
The hotel industry worldwide is changing how it approaches design amid growing demand from remote workers.
After spending the last 32 years tracking and analyzing the Boston/Cambridge (“the City”) lodging market, Pinnacle Advisory Group (“Pinnacle”) is quite comfortable forecasting top line (occupancy and ADR) revenue for the City. But projecting the future with precision can be complicated. Here’s our perspective on the City’s lodging market for 2024:
With the busiest airport in the world and a lower cost of doing business than peer regions, Metro Atlanta is the key inland distribution hub of the Southeast. Metro Atlanta is home to 17 Fortune 500 corporations like The Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, and UPS. It also sustains a diverse economy centered around technology, healthcare and health tech, logistics, advanced manufacturing, and now electric vehicles and clean tech. For the 10th consecutive year Area Development Magazine has ranked Georgia the number one state for business.
With the pandemic mostly in the past, Downtown Indianapolis’s ADR has fully recovered, but occupancy still has not returned to 2019 levels given the slow rebound of corporate demand. However, leisure demand has increased, and the city’s event pipeline is robust, supporting a positive outlook for Downtown Indianapolis.
New Orleans consistently ranks among the top leisure destinations in the United States due to its reputation for food, drink, and music; the preserved Vieux Carré (French Quarter); and its innate culture of hospitality. In 2020, New Orleans’s most popular event, Mardi Gras, was held on February 25, but the city shut down on March 20 as COVID-19 infection rates began to increase. Thus, Jazz Fest and other conventions, events, and festivals for the rest of that year were canceled.
While Anchorage was significantly affected by the pandemic, a surge of independent travelers boosted the economy in 2021. More robust growth occurred in 2022 with the return of normal demand sources. Furthermore, the conversion of hotels to permanent housing has reduced the hotel supply in Anchorage and contributes to recent trends.
Findings from the Cushman and Wakefield Operator Beat 2023 indicate that capital cities throughout Europe continue to hold their allure for operators, with the recent addition of Vienna to this esteemed list. Notably, City markets in France, Germany, Benelux, and Turkey have experienced a surge in operator interest since 2021.
The 2020 COVID-influenced lodging industry recession resulted in some noticeable changes to the way hotels provide food and beverage (F&B) service.
With the pandemic generally in the rearview for the market, Downtown Memphis hotels have yet to recover to occupancy levels realized in 2019. This is attributed to a slow recovery in both corporate and group demand, coupled with significant growth in new supply. However, rising average rates at new hotels have become the saving grace for market RevPAR levels.
The Market Snapshot: Asia Pacific 2023 highlights an overview of transaction activity in the region and presents 25 markets’ current hospitality landscape; each covering demand and supply dynamics, hotel performances, and key transactions.
Without a doubt, leisure sports picked up in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic- especially golf. According to the National Golf Foundation, 67% of golfers credited their increased play in the late summer of 2020 to having “fewer alternative ways to spend leisure time”. Not only did existing golfers increase their time on the course, but the National Golf Foundation also reports 25.6 million golfers on the course in 2022, a 1.3 million increase from 2019. Moreover, the National Golf Foundation reports an average of 21.1 rounds of golf played per golfer in 2021. This is the greatest average number of rounds per player in a single year seen since 1999.
The onset of COVID-19 in March 2020 had devastating effects for the tourism industry across the country, and the state of Connecticut experienced the third-largest decline in travel, tourism, and outdoor recreation employment from Q2 2019 to Q2 2020. Connecticut was quick to rebound, however, with 2022 occupancy levels only slightly below those of 2019 and average daily rate (ADR) levels far surpassing those of 2019. The upcoming renovation of the XL Center in Hartford, Connecticut’s “Find Your Vibe” campaign, and the state’s current hotel development pipeline are all indicators of Connecticut’s recovery and success.Connecticut’s strong recovery in 2022 and further growth in 2023 can be linked to the state’s “Find Your Vibe” campaign that commenced in June 2022, which highlights the state’s year-round tourism activities, such as music and arts festivals, outdoor activities, and restaurants. CTvisit.com, the state’s official tourism website, drew a record 7.1 million visits this past year, which ranked it among the top-five state tourism sites in the nation for both traffic and engagement. Furthermore, select towns in Connecticut were recently featured as popular destinations in leading publications. The New York Times listed New Haven as one of the top places to go in 2023, and Mystic ranked fourth in USA Today’s list of “10 best summer vacation destinations in the U.S. for 2023.” Additionally, a study recently released by Tourism Economics illustrates that direct visitor spending in Connecticut generated roughly $17 billion in total business sales in 2022, approximately 3.7% higher than the previous peak in 2019 ($16.4 billion).Moreover, Hartford’s XL Center is slated for a $100-million renovation starting in 2024. Plans for the arena include the expansion of the loading dock, the addition of a sports-betting venue on the west side of the arena, and the creation of more luxury seating. The primary impetus behind the renovation is attracting an NHL team to call the facility home. Connecticut has been without an NHL team since 1997, when the Hartford Whalers moved to North Carolina. However, Connecticut governor Ned Lamont has said there is a group in place to buy the Arizona Coyotes and relocate them to Hartford. This comes in the wake of Arizona voters’ rejection of a $2-billion proposal for a new arena, leaving the Coyotes without a permanent place to play. Although the acquisition is highly speculative, a new sports team, coupled with the XL Center’s facelift, could bolster tourism demand for the state.
At the opening session of the 2023 Global Hospitality Conclave held at The Oberoi in New Delhi, India, Professor Dev spoke with Hari Nair, senior vice president, lodging partners at Expedia Group, about the ten trends that are changing the world of hospitality, travel, and tourism, including changing customer profiles, shifting consumption patterns, intensifying competition, growing segmentation, dwindling differentiation, diminishing brand loyalty, evolving value orientation, escalating concern for the environment, continuing consolidation, and increasing power of digital.
Despite the threat of inflation and a cost-of-living crisis in many countries worldwide, the results of the Fall 2023 European Accommodation Barometer further bolsters optimism among hoteliers across the continent. As a whole, the summer of 2023 has been a resounding success. Hoteliers have seen yet another 6-month period outdo the last. And for the first time since the Barometer survey began, the majority of respondents now expect their economic situation to develop positively over the next 6 months.
Qatar’s travel and tourism industry has been under the scrutiny of the public eye ever since the FIFA World Cup 2022. As the first Arab state to hold the mega event, the country spent around $220 billion on infrastructure during a 12-year preparation and witnessed an impressive and fast-paced transformation, including the development of an ultra-modern new city, spectacular stadiums, a state-of-the-art metro, countless of leisure attractions and world-class hotels dotting the skyline.