Market Trends

🍔 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.

🌆 In the U.S., hotel industry performance from June 30-July 6, 2024, showed a decline with occupancy at 61.3% (↓0.9%), ADR at $157.27 (↑0.5%), and RevPAR at $96.35 (↓0.4%). New Orleans led with the highest year-over-year increases: occupancy up 15.5% to 56.6%, ADR up 35.1% to $197.23, and RevPAR up 56.1% to $111.72. St. Louis and Tampa had the steepest RevPAR declines, with St. Louis down 25.4% to $58.65 and Tampa down 13.5% to $100.65.

🏠 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.

✈ Cloudbeds' 2024 State of Independent Lodging Report highlights experiential travel, inflation-busting travel hacks, and skill demands for hoteliers. Findings reveal 81% of travelers plan to maintain or increase travel in 2024, nearly 70% are likely to travel for concerts, and 47% of US travelers book destinations for specific restaurants. Over 50% would book a surprise trip. By 2027, 42% of business tasks to be automated. Currently, 91% of hotels use a PMS, 64% have a booking engine, and 33% utilize a channel manager.

🍜 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.