Travel & Data Trends

Business travel is booming. According to the GBTA’s Business Travel Index Outlook report, business travel spending is projected to reach $1.4 trillion this year and climb to $1.8 trillion by 2027.

Running a hotel has never been easy. And the challenge is made even harder for those hoteliers who still rely on legacy property management systems (PMSs) that are no longer suited to modern habits, expectations and technologies. Systems that hinder rather than drive efficiency for your teams.

Major cities in the Southeast like Charleston, Atlanta, Savannah, and Raleigh-Durham remain strong hotel investment markets due to their thriving tourism, growing business hubs, and strategic locations. Enhanced financing options are expected to boost transaction volumes. Significant construction pipelines and improving economic conditions highlight the region’s long-term resilience and investment appeal.

Group travelers represent a highly sought-after segment in the hotel industry, yet they’re also among the most challenging to capture. The competition is fierce, the logistics are complex, and responding to RFPs can quickly become overwhelming. But the opportunity is too big to ignore. Private and corporate groups make up an increasingly important and growing segment of the post-pandemic travel market. To capture a share, hotels need to up their game with groups. It all starts with getting better at winning group RFPs.

The hospitality industry has long struggled with fragmented data locked away in isolated systems. But recent advances in technology are helping hoteliers achieve something that was once difficult: centralized, accessible data. This new wave of data connectivity allows hotels to securely integrate insights from all facets of their operations in near real-time, giving them control over their data and the ability to access it when and how they want.

Downtown Kansas City and the Country Club Plaza are established submarkets in Kansas City, each with strong demand generators and numerous hotels, while Village West is a growing submarket with a strong pipeline of development. While these markets are all in different economic stages, the outlook is optimistic for all three.

The Covid pandemic amplified an existing challenge in hospitality: staffing shortages. When hotels shut down, many employees left the industry, finding better hours and pay elsewhere. As a result, hoteliers now face a staffing crisis, exacerbated by legacy systems and repetitive tasks that can deter new hires.

The word competitiveness is emerging as a theme for the new European Commission, a guiding principle for economic development, and an alarm bell to spur political leaders across Europe’s capitals to action. It is right, and the report by Mario Draghi couldn’t be more timely: Europe must take bold steps to sharpen its competitive edge in an increasingly fierce global environment.

In the ever-evolving hospitality industry, the use of business intelligence is becoming increasingly important. Hoteliers are recognizing the immense value that data brings to their business, from understanding drivers of demand to developing effective revenue management strategies. But the big question is – how willing are they to invest in new technology?

Data isn’t meaningful unless you do something with it. Let’s say your average RevPAR for June is $150. Alone, that doesn’t mean very much. But what if you compare that number to the average RevPAR, globally and within your region? If you measure whether you’re improving year-on-year, month-on-month? If you look beyond RevPAR to accompanying key metrics?