The U.S. hotel industry is having a good year. The luxury travel advisor channel is having a much better one.
At this year’s Hotel Data Conference in Nashville, Amanda Hite — president of STR — delivered a revised forecast from the industry’s gold standard for data: 4.4 percent U.S. RevPAR growth for 2026, upgraded from earlier projections, with occupancy nudged to 63.1 percent. (RevPAR, for anyone who has managed to avoid a hotel earnings call, is revenue per available room, the performance metric the asset side of this business lives and dies by.)
Days later at Virtuoso Travel Week in Las Vegas, Misty Belles, vice president of global public relations at Virtuoso, displayed some major bragging rights: Network sales for the luxury travel advisor consortium are up 20.8 percent from a year ago.
A great solo travel tip spotted this week on Luxury Travel Advisor.
