Transactions
Primary
May 4
A 13.3% trailing cap rate on a Manhattan hotel sale doesn't signal distress. It signals a REIT that ran the numbers on $12 million in deferred capex, a ground lease escalation, and July union negotiations, and decided someone else could hold that bag.
Gartner says nearly a third of service industry leaders are cutting frontline staff because of AI by early 2027, and tech companies are already shedding tens of thousands. Most hotel operators are watching that headline and wondering if they're next... they should be wondering how to hire those people before anyone else does.
MGM Grand's buffet closes May 31 after 33 years, and the math behind why it's disappearing tells you everything about where casino F&B is headed... and what it means for every hotel operator still clinging to a food concept that doesn't earn its square footage.
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Swire Properties imploded a 326-room luxury hotel and is rebuilding with 121 keys, 298 branded residences, and $1.3 billion in pre-sales already booked. The capital structure tells you exactly where luxury hospitality profit margins are migrating.
A hotel tech company built by someone who actually ran hotels is bringing its AI pitch to Hunter next week... and the 920,000 invoices it processed last year suggest this isn't vaporware. But the real question is whether your 90-key property needs what they're selling.
February's hiring numbers came in hot, and every restaurant, retailer, and warehouse within five miles of your property just got a little more aggressive with their wage offers. You're already behind.
Operations
Primary
Apr 12
Los Angeles just handed the hotel industry a real-time case study in what happens when labor policy outruns operating economics. The numbers coming out of that market should terrify every operator in a city with an activist council.
The original NLRB guidance that was supposed to make gig workers easier to unionize has been gutted by the new administration. But if you're a GM who's been leaning on staffing platforms to run your banquet operation, the underlying exposure hasn't gone anywhere... it's just wearing a different suit.
Hotels are spending up to $100,000 per unit on delivery robots and AI concierges while 60% of properties still run on infrastructure that can't support them. The gap between the demo and the overnight shift has never been wider.
Congress just killed the last realistic shot at immigration reform, but if you're running a hotel, the labor crisis didn't start this week. It started the day your best room attendant didn't come back from her day off, and nobody on your bench could replace her.
Congress is moving on federal minimum wage legislation, and the per-property payroll impact at a 150-room select-service hotel runs $160,000 to $374,000 annually before benefits load. The owners who model this before the vote will negotiate from strength; the ones who wait will negotiate from panic.
Operations
Primary
Mar 25
LA is simultaneously trying to push hotel taxes past 20% for the Olympics while businesses collect signatures to kill the gross receipts tax entirely. If you operate in Southern California, the math on both sides of this fight is about to reshape your P&L in ways nobody at City Hall seems to have thought through.
Over 400 workers at a 1,200-key convention hotel walked off the job for 40 days and came back with a $20 floor heading to $22. If you're operating in a union-eligible market and think this stays in Texas, you're not paying attention.
Technology
Primary
Mar 18
New York City wants to hike hotel property taxes 9.5% while operating costs already outpace revenue growth 4-to-1. For the operators who actually have to absorb this, the question isn't political... it's whether your systems can even tell you where the margin is disappearing.
Three straight months of gains have everyone feeling good about hotel equities. The real number worth watching is the 200-basis-point gap between hotel REITs and the broader REIT index in February.
Pebblebrook guided 7.5%-9.0% same-property RevPAR growth for Q1 2026 while still carrying a net loss for 2025 of $65.8 million. The April 29 earnings call will reveal whether that optimism is backed by margin improvement or just busier hotels losing money faster.
Operations
Primary
Mar 12
Manhattan RevPAR climbed 7.1% in the first half of 2025 while outer borough segments dropped up to 4.4%. Same city, two completely different P&Ls.
A historic San Francisco hotel reopens after a loan default, ownership change, and major renovation. The per-key math tells a story the "discreet luxury" branding doesn't.
Six months into LA's new hotel minimum wage ordinance, 650 positions are gone, 14 hotel restaurants are closing, and 58% of surveyed hotels expect to be unprofitable by year's end. The wage hasn't even hit $25 yet.