Market Trends

🏠 London's Studio Est, founded in 2020 by Louise East, renovated an apartment inside the iconic Battersea Power Station, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott (1929-1955, decommissioned in 1975). The owner's vision was to mirror personal taste and the building's art deco heritage. Incorporating brutalist elements with softer textures, the design featured custom furnishings and vintage pieces like Mario Bellini leather chairs and a Charles Rennie Mackintosh Hill House Chair. The redevelopment added residential, office, and retail spaces; WilkinsonEyre and Foster + Partners contributed to the restoration and design, including an Apple office and store.

🚿 Dezeen's lookbook series showcases eight homes where bathtubs serve as centrepieces, offering visual inspiration from the archive. Featured homes include Art House in Greece by Kallos Turin, with veiny green marble, and a Versailles townhouse in France by RMGB, highlighting marble contrast. A Milan apartment by David/Nicolas sports a pink bathtub, while The Maker's Barn in the UK by Hutch Design offers a sunken tub with views. In London, Untitled House by Szczepaniak Astridge features a "concrete sculpture" bath, and an Upper West Side apartment in the US by General Assembly showcases terrazzo. G House in Spain by Gon Architects presents a large, white-tiled tub. Sunderland Road house in the UK by 2LG exhibits playful pastels. The lookbooks also include living rooms with giant sofas, room dividers with storage solutions, and wooden kitchens.

🏨 China's hotel construction pipeline in Q2 saw a 4% increase in projects and 3% in rooms YOY, reaching 3,815 projects with 699,786 rooms. Under construction: 2,743 projects with 498,551 rooms, up 3% in projects, 4% in rooms YOY. After pandemic recovery in 2023, leisure travel demand drove room rates up. Midrange and prime hotels in China rose 26.3% and 9.2% since 2019. Upcoming: 390 projects/70,520 rooms to start within 12 months, 9% and 10% increases YOY. Early planning stages: 682 projects/130,715 rooms, up 4% YOY. New announcements in Q2: 264 projects with 43,301 rooms, a 12% YOY increase. Renovation and conversion projects jumped 32% in projects, 47% in rooms YOY. By Q2's end, 341 new hotels with 47,084 rooms opened; 937 new hotels/139,673 rooms expected by year-end. Forecasts for 2025 and 2026 are 994 hotels/166,683 rooms and 759 hotels/146,894 rooms, respectively. Top cities: Chengdu (147 projects/29,951 rooms), Shanghai (126/24,340),

🍷 Orange wine, also known as amber wine or ramato, is a white wine that gains a unique taste similar to a dry red wine from extended skin contact during production. It pairs well with various dishes and reflects ancient winemaking practices. As per Datassential, orange wine appears on 1.1% of U.S. restaurant menus, marking a 32% increase in the last four years.

📈 PAR Punchh released its "PAR Punchh Loyalty Trends Report," revealing innovative loyalty program strategies in the restaurant industry. Key findings: loyalty programs drove a 12% increase in loyalty sales from 2022 to 2023, a 5% overall rise in consumer spending, morning sales growth due to office returns, and a 25% loyalty sign-up rate among Gen Z. In-store ordering accounted for nearly 40% of transactions, underscoring the value of omnichannel presence and POS systems. CEO Savneet Singh emphasized the importance of understanding loyalty behaviors for market success. The report is based on data from Punchh's platform, used by over 30% of top 100 restaurant brands.

🍠 Summer squash, including zucchini, pattypan, and chayote, has grown in restaurant menu appearances by 38% over the past four years, now found on 1.4% of U.S. menus. 81% of U.S. consumers recognize summer squash, which stands out for its versatility in various dishes without adding excess moisture, according to Datassential market research.

🍔 Sahib Rana, CEO of Toronto-based Lazeez Shawarma, partnered with Revel Systems to implement a flexible, cloud-based POS across 61 locations, as highlighted at the MURTEC Executive Summit Canada on June 20 & 21 at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto. Established in 2013, Lazeez sought a scalable solution for rapid growth and enhanced guest experience. Revel's platform includes a Kitchen Display System (KDS), which improved efficiency by replacing paper tickets, and a Customer Display System (CDS) to ensure order accuracy and promote specials.

🏠 The Global Wellness Institute valued the wellness tourism sector at $651 billion in 2022, projected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2027. Wellness travellers spend significantly more per trip compared to other sectors. Hotels can capitalize on this growth by offering activities that promote a healthy mind and body without necessarily incurring high costs. Strategies include marketing existing wellness elements like gyms, leveraging local culture, offering food options for various dietary needs, and partnering with fitness and wellness instructors. MasterCard’s report highlighted a 65% increase in spending on experiences from 2019 to 2023, suggesting a shift towards experiential and wellness travel.

🍜 Georgian cuisine from the former Soviet republic is gaining attention in the U.S., distinguished by local meats, cheeses, fresh produce, nuts, spices, and ancient winemaking traditions. Influences span across Ottomans to Russians due to the historic "Silk Road." Notable dishes include satsivi, pkhali, kharcho, nigvziani badrijani, khachapuri, khinkali, and churchkhela. Georgia's population is around 3.7 million, with its food scene expanding notably since 2016 in cities like North Miami Beach, Fla., and Chicago, where restaurants like Kavkaz and Chicago Diplomat Cafe thrive on word-of-mouth and social media promotion. Supra and Tabla in Washington, D.C., offer traditional and contemporary Georgian dishes, emphasizing the cultural "supra" experience of togetherness and hospitality.

Tourism can simultaneously contribute to economic recovery, as seen in Iceland, and lead to the destruction of local communities and environments, contributing to global warming. McClanahan's "The New Tourist" discusses the dual impact of tourism, highlighting the balance between its benefits and the damage from over-tourism exacerbated by social media and climate change.