Luxury hotels face headwinds

As I prepare for the annual meeting of the owners and operators of Leading Hotels of this weekend, I am struck by the rapidly changing performance of luxury hotels in the U.S. During the last upturn, between 2004 and 2006, we reported that hotels in this chain scale achieved double-digit RevPAR growth in all three years. During these heady days the notion of luxury hotels as “recession proof” came into being.