A
panel of HICAP experts talked about reasons to be excited about next year, how
AI could allow hotels to reclaim inventory and the importance of flexible
models for hotels.
SINGAPORE — During the final
session of the HICAP conference in Singapore last month, Global Hotel Alliance CEO Christopher Hartley
wanted to leave things with an optimistic view of the near future.
“I think 2026 is going to be a
great year and we’re going to see continued growth,” said Hartley, based in Dubai.
““If you look at 2025, we’ve all been through periods of uncertainty,” he continued, mentioning tariffs, geopolitical tensions and an overall slowdown in business demand. “While we saw a flattening in the growth of domestic demand, particularly in the U.S. and regionally across markets like Australia and China, international leisure travelers continued to grow significantly in 2025. We see that continuing into 2026.”
International travelers are generally staying longer and spending more. We can be optimistic in terms of that.
Chris Hartley
Hartley said the high-yield
business of leisure travelers is making him the most optimistic for next year.
“International travelers are
generally staying longer and spending more. We can be optimistic in terms of
that,” he said. “We’re very much focused on upscale and luxury properties and
that’s where we see international demand going.”
Hartley was part of a “Views
from the Boardroom — Round Three” panel at the Hotel Investors Conference Asia
Pacific (HICAP) event in Singapore. The panelists included Hulian Duan,
managing director – APAC & Americas for Hannover, Germany-based TUI Hotels
& Resorts; Kevin Goh, CEO of Singapore-based The Ascott Ltd. and Lodging
CapitaLand Investment; and Jeff Wagoner, president and CEO of Honolulu-based
Outrigger Hospitality Group. The author of this story served as moderator.
How AI will affect
room inventory
When the topic turned to how AI
is affecting the hotel industry, Wagoner also adopted an optimistic tone
regarding the industry's potential benefits, particularly in relation to
whether hotels can reclaim some of their inventory that had been allocated to
OTAs.
“When you think about AI… it’s
not just asking a question and getting an answer. It’s going to be the search
engine of the future. So, what does that look like? How do hotels get rendered
back and is this potentially a time where the industry claims back its
inventory?” he said.
We’re at a place today where you don’t pay for these (AI) searches… the opportunity to buy terms doesn’t exist the way it does on Google or any of the other search engines that are out there today. So we’re in a really interesting time on how this develops and we’re all going to be faced with this probably over the next year.
Jeff Wagoner
Another topic that will become
an issue in the coming year, Wagoner said, was how the AI companies intend to
monetize search in the same way as SEO.
“We’re at a place today where
you don’t pay for these searches… The opportunity to buy terms doesn’t exist
the way it does on Google or any of the other search engines that are out there
today,” he said. “So, we’re in a really interesting time on how this develops
and we’re all going to be faced with this probably over the next year.
“They’re going to want to
monetize. There’s no doubt about it. Today, you can say, 'Tell me four hotels
in Phuket (Thailand) that are luxury,' and you’re going to get that rendered
back to you. Four hotels are going to come back. They might be the individual
websites for those brands. It might be the individual hotel website, or it
could be an online travel agent, but all of that’s happening relatively
organically right now… How does that all work in the future?”
Wagoner mentioned a recent
meeting with Oracle about this exact topic.
“They’re spending $26 billion to
try to figure this out. The big brands are trying to figure it out,” he said.
“When you think about AI, don’t think of it as a slick tool to get an answer to
a question. It will be our booking engine of the future, and our ability to be
able to drive any one of our assets or our brands to it is going to be
critically important.”
How flex-hybrid can change business
Goh discussed how The Ascott
Ltd.’s flex-hybrid model is reshaping investment and operating models for his
company.
“We actually thought about this
during COVID. We looked at hotel occupancies going down really low and cash
flows going down really low. But we also looked at our extended-stay portfolio.
We were still running at a good 40% to 50% occupancy. That meant that we still had
cash flow coming in. We could keep the lights on and were able to pay our bills
and be able to make a little bit of money after that.”
That’s when we discovered that our product can flex between a long-stay (extended-stay) and short-stay spectrum. That allows investors in our properties to flex between the long and short positions.
Kevin Goh
That kind of thinking has helped
Ascott adjust its model for the current traveler, Goh said.
“We’re seeing people who are
traveling in groups, whether it’s friends or family and wanting to stay more in
the extended-stay apartment, as opposed to, say, three hotel rooms,” he said.
“So, that’s when we discovered that our product can flex between a long-stay
(extended-stay) and short-stay spectrum. That allows investors in our
properties to flex between the long and short positions.
“Let’s say Singapore is having
an F1 weekend or Taylor Swift is in town. We can lean a lot more into the
short-stay segment and the yield is a lot higher. Let’s say we’re going through
a very tough economic cycle. We can then explore doing more long-stay segments,
which means you have stable cash flows and longer tenures of contracts with
your guests. That flexibility is actually something that our investors love us
for. They said they want to do more because they can ride through the different
economic cycles.”
Brand
diversification
Duan said TUI has been working
intensively on balancing brand diversification with operational efficiency for
its benefit.
“Balancing the brand
diversification with this operational efficiency in emerging markets is quite
important for us,” she said. “We have learned a lot of successful stories from
other international brands in the past by developing hotel clusters in certain
areas so they can align all the resources to support this class of hotel
success.”
Duan brought up a recent
development that TUI announced in September for Oman in the Middle East as an
example.
“Even though each of those
brands targeted different customer segments, all those hotels can share
opportunities, the experience, the system, and our operational know-how,” she
said. “With all those successful stories we have done in Cape Verde and Italy
and in Greece, we’re trying to bring the same model to the Asia Pacific region
in the future.”