TOP NEWS

🍳 Michel Roux, renowned chef, was named Langham Luminary by Langham Hospitality Group for their campaign "Your Story. Our Legacy." in 2025. This campaign highlights influential figures in culture and gastronomy. Roux, celebrated for leading Le Gavroche to achieve the UK's first triple Michelin star distinction, has contributed significantly to The Langham, London, over a decade. A London culinary enthusiast, Roux draws inspiration from local spots like Trinity, Miel, and La Fromagerie.

🏨 For generations, hotel General Managers (GMs) focused on operational control and quick decision-making, but today's GMs face challenges with AI, real-time data, labor shortages, and sustainability. Modern hotel leadership emphasizes collaboration, digital fluency, and cultural intelligence. Successful GMs empower teams, integrate sustainability into operations, and adapt during crises. Emotional intelligence and curiosity are crucial as hospitality evolves. The GM role is not disappearing but evolving to balance human judgement with technological advancements and diverse operational demands.

🏨 Hotel groups spend a year analyzing GOPPAR to identify growth opportunities from internal performance gaps. By sorting hotel portfolios, companies can measure the gap between top and bottom performers. This internal disparity often exceeds potential acquisition gains. To improve, strong leadership habits are necessary, and commercially aligned organizations grow 1.9% faster in revenue and 4.7% faster in earnings. Solutions include sending managers to top-performing hotels and standardizing forward-looking forecasts.

📈 Insolvencies in the accommodation and food sectors rose by 10.2% in Q2 2026, with 840 companies affected, due to increased costs and wage hikes. A total of 1,602 closures occurred in the first half of 2026, down 6.1% from 2025. The Buchler Phillips Hospitality Index increased from 180.6 in March to 199.0 in June 2026. Wage rises from April 1 added £1.4bn to sector costs. Key closures included MeatLiquor and Restaurant 104.

💄 Merit Beauty partners with The Ritz-Carlton at seven North American locations—Toronto, Santa Barbara, Dallas, Washington DC, Naples, Los Angeles, and New York, NoMad—from summer to early autumn. Guests enjoy in-room beauty kits, carts, and a ‘Minimalist Martini’ paired with fragrance samples. Club Level guests receive complimentary beauty products like Great Skin Serum and Clean Volume Mascara. An exclusive travel kit with a keychain is available in-room and online, highlighting Merit’s practical, on-the-go ethos.

🌎 18 months before an eclipse, unusual trends in hotel bookings appeared, especially in Burgos, Cuenca, and Vitoria. A year out, secondary destinations saw early bookings, deviating from normal demand patterns. Unlike demand spikes, demand signals like search trends and early bookings help commercial teams proactively manage future demand. Amadeus tracked flight demand in northern Spain for over a year, noting that real signals emerge from multiple data points like flight and hotel searches, media coverage, and early bookings.

📈 Twenty years of data from 85 crises reveal proactive destinations recover 1.5 times faster, with recovery times dropping from 24 to 10-12 months. AI agents now significantly influence hotel bookings, requiring specific optimization strategies. Fall 2026 U.S. lodging prices are 20% higher than in summer, but select cities offer 15-45% discounts. IHG expands in Taiwan and launches a LINE MINI App, while Rosewood, Fairmont, and Fraser expand in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Malaysia, respectively.

💻 Dubai, UAE, August 17, 2026 – Shiji announced that Al Khoory Hotels, a UAE-based hotel group, selected Shiji's Daylight PMS, Infrasys POS, and Reviewpro Reputation to enhance service quality and efficiency. Al Khoory operates seven hotels in Dubai. The cloud-based Shiji Platform aids in unifying guest data, improving operational workflows, and maintaining data privacy. This technology investment aligns with Al Khoory’s focus on personalized guest experiences and operational excellence.