by Robert Rauch | Sep 29, 2026 | Featured, HR
Tech, workforce expectations, guest demands and the regulatory environment fuel changes First published on CoStar on September 2nd, 2026 Human resources (HR) departments have had to adapt to change by reshaping recruitment strategies, employee engagement practices and...
by Robert Rauch | Sep 29, 2026 | Featured, Revenue Management
How to Cut Costs Without Cutting Service The most expensive line on many hotel P&Ls is one that owners rarely look at in dollars: what OTAs actually cost in 2026. Commissions tend to run 15 to 25 percent of the room rate, while a direct booking usually costs a...
by Robert Rauch | Sep 29, 2026 | Featured, Industry Insights, Monthly Market Reports
The question I kept hearing in July was what Los Angeles would look like once the World Cup crowds went home. August gave a fair answer. RevPAR came in at $162.69, up 7.0% from $152.00 a year ago, with no tournament to lean on. That is a step down from the 11% to 12%...
by Robert Rauch | Sep 29, 2026 | Featured, Monthly Market Reports, San Diego
Forecast & Market Update for San Diego | September 2026 August is usually the month when a San Diego summer shows whether it had real legs. This year it did. County RevPAR reached $177.00, up 7.1% from about $165 last August, and the growth came from both rate and...
by Robert Rauch | Sep 28, 2026 | Featured, Hotel Management
A hotel management agreement looks simple on the surface. Most first-time owners I meet describe it as a base fee, an incentive fee, a term, and a few pages of legal language. Anyone who has negotiated a few of these knows that the fine print decides whether an...
by Robert Rauch | Aug 25, 2026 | Featured, Forecasts
US hotel RevPAR is pacing toward 5% growth in 2026. I don’t see a reason it can’t hit 4% in 2027, split roughly between 1% occupancy growth and 3% average rate growth. That puts me ahead of where most of the big forecasters sit right now, so let me walk...
by Robert Rauch | Aug 25, 2026 | Featured, Hotel Development, Hotel Management, Hotel Operations
Published on CoStar.com 8/11/2026 I think of a hotel business plan the way an architect thinks about a blueprint. You do not throw a stack of LEGO blocks together and hope they hold up. A written plan is still the best communication tool a hotel has for employees,...
by Robert Rauch | Aug 21, 2026 | Featured, Hotel Management, Hotel Sales
Group business is climbing back toward its pre-pandemic share of hotel demand, and fall is when most group sales teams do their heaviest booking of the year. In my experience, a strong hotel group sales strategy in 2026 has less to do with team size and more to do...
by Robert Rauch | Aug 17, 2026 | Featured, Hotel Management, Hotel Operations
A few months ago I was walking a property at 7:45 on a Saturday morning and found exactly one person at the front desk, no one in the breakfast area, and a housekeeping supervisor trying to cover a callout on the fourth floor herself before a 200-room sellout weekend....
by Robert Rauch | Aug 7, 2026 | Featured, Hotel Management, Hotel Operations
If you own or invest in a hotel, you’ve probably seen the term “hotel fair market share” in your STR report and skimmed past it on the way to RevPAR. That’s a mistake. Fair market share is one of the few numbers in hotel performance reporting that tells...