US hoteliers optimistic about second half of 2023

Even though a possible recession looms, industry performance indicates that U.S. hoteliers are right to feel optimistic about the future

With the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference as a backdrop, Isaac Collazo, vice president of analytics at STR, and Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality market analytics at at CoStar Group discuss whether the optimism they witnessed from conference stages last week is warranted.

Key takeaways

• While rates are starting to moderate, Freitag and Collazo discuss whether still-increasing demand will be enough to keep performance in line with inflation;
• While different companies and agencies predict different levels of a recession still to happen, Collazo and Freitag discuss how a “rolling recession” may be the more likely possibility;
• While leisure travel demand normalizes, Collazo and Freitag share some of the data from related industries that show group demand and related business demand for downtown markets are pushing the industry forward.

Listen to the podcast at HNN