Hospitality Trends

World Cup Lifted U.S. Hotels in July, but Broader Inbound Travel Remained Weak The 2026 FIFA World Cup delivered a measurable boost to the U.S. travel industry in July, particularly for hotels in host cities. But newly released travel data indicate that even the world’s biggest sporting event was not enough to produce a nationwide surge in international visitation.

Americans Adjust Budgets Rather Than Cancel Travel Plans, MMGY Survey Finds Travel Spending and Trip Expectations Rise Americans expect to spend an average of $5,655 on leisure travel during the next 12 months, according to MMGY’s 2026 Portrait of American Travelers Fall Edition. The expected spending figure is higher than the amount reported in the organization’s summer survey.

Latin America Business Travel Spending Forecast to Reach $67.7 Billion USD in 2026 As Growth Accelerates Amid Ongoing Economic Pressures At GBTA LATAM Conference 2026, industry leaders examine business travel’s growth, innovation, impact and resilience in the region Business travel spending in Latin America is forecast to reach $67.7 billion USD in 2026, an increase of approximately 11% year over year and among the highest regional growth rates globally, according to research unveiled...

Among luxury destinations including Milan, London, Paris and Madrid, Milan's luxury segment holds the highest GOPPAR by a clear margin Insights from Juan Gallardo’s session at Italian Hospitality Investment Conference Milan, 2026 2026 has been an unusual year for European hospitality. Geopolitical instability in the Middle East has rerouted safe-haven demand toward Southern Europe, and Italy sits at the centre of that story. The arrivals data backs it up.

According to CoStar’s latest data through 26 September, the U.S. hotel industry recorded year-over-year performance gains during the week of Sept. 20-26, supported in part by the favorable timing of Rosh Hashanah. National hotel occupancy reached 69.7%, up 6.4% from the comparable week in 2025. Average daily rate increased 7.4% to US$179.43, while revenue per available room rose 14.2% to US$125.06. Among the Top 25 hotel markets, Orlando posted the largest occupancy increase, rising 18.6% to 68.3%.

China Travel Report Points to Growth in Outbound, Inbound and AI-Driven Travel Outbound Travel Increases in 2025 Mainland Chinese residents made 167.92 million outbound trips in 2025, a 16% increase from the previous year. More than half of surveyed outbound travel companies recorded turnover above $3.5 million during the year.

European airport trade body ACI EUROPE today released its air traffic report for August 2026, together with an analysis of traffic performance across the two busiest months of the summer season. Passenger traffic across the European airport network increased by +3.9% and +3.1% respectively in July and August, versus the same months last year. This marked a clear acceleration from the second quarter of 2026 (+1.3%), when the impact of the war in the Middle East constrained growth.

Why Remote Work Isn’t Working When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, all the dithering about remote work stopped virtually overnight. Working from home wasn’t perfect, but people made it work. At first, remote employees were triumphant as they checked off their personal and professional to-do lists from the comfort of home.

By Rod Clough We’ve seen ups and downs in recent weeks with RevPAR changes as we deal with a Labor Day shift in year-over-year comparisons and move out of the busy summer season and into the fall months. The latest weekly trends as of the writing of this article reflect strong net September performance even with the holiday timing, with RevPAR growth of just over 10% for the first half of the month.

Global Air Passenger Demand Grows 0.2% in July The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released data for August 2026 global passenger demand: Total demand,measured in revenue passenger kilometers (RPK), was down 0.8% compared to August 2025. Excluding the Middle East, demand grew by 0.6%. Total capacity, measured in available seat kilometers (ASK), increased 0.3% year-on-year. The load factor was 85.1% (-0.9 ppt compared to August 2025).