What the Leisure-Led Travel Recovery Means for Future Hotel Development
Skift Take
Real estate is a long-term play that generally isn’t impacted by downturns, but the pandemic accelerated efforts to beef up some development offerings in the leisure and luxury orbit.
Early Check-In
Editor’s Note: Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill brings readers exclusive reporting and insights into hotel deals and development, and how those trends are making an impact across the travel industry.Anyone expecting a radically new hotel development playbook to emerge from the pandemic is sorely mistaken. Instead, development pipelines at major companies like Marriott and Hyatt are now informed by travel trends already underway prior to the health crisis.
A leisure-led recovery in hotel performance continued to dominate the narrative on third quarter earnings season. All the major hotel companies reported profits this cycle — a first during the pandemic — and that almost entirely had to do with summer leisure travel picking up the slack from suffering business travel demand.
This shouldn’t be that much of a surprise: Marriott leaders last week noted on their earnings call leisure demand was accelerating as far back as 2010.
But the notable development indicator is just how much hotel companies expect leisure travel to continue to dominate the recovery in the years ahead. Marriott leaders don't think the leisure recovery
