Skip to content
‹ Back to IndustriesHospitality

MarketScale Hospitality 01/30/19: Making Things Affordable & Sustainable

What matters most to guests when they’re traveling? That has been an important question for those in the hospitality industry for a long time. The answer has changed over the years but the idea has remained the same. Hotels and restaurants aim to provide the best experience for their guests. On today’s episode of…

This story was produced through MarketScale. See how Hospitality teams put it to work with Executive Thought Leadership.

Share
MarketScale Hospitality 01/30/19: Making Things Affordable & Sustainable

Free workspace

Turn your Hospitality expertise into content.

Record interviews, organize footage, and write with AI on a free trial of the MarketScale platform for qualifying companies. No demo required, no credit card.

Try it Free

What matters most to guests when they’re traveling? That has been an important question for those in the hospitality industry for a long time. The answer has changed over the years but the idea has remained the same. Hotels and restaurants aim to provide the best experience for their guests. On today’s episode of the MarketScale Hospitality Podcast, we take a look at two of the most important factors for industry: affordability and sustainability.

The Traveling Family

The vast majority of family travel is simple, according to veteran travel expert Rainer Jenss, president and founder of Family Travel Association. Irregardless of income, families want value and affordability and the industry is responding with specific products and offerings to fill that need. Jenss sits down with MarketScale’s Maggie Shein to discuss what today’s traveling family looks like (hint: it’s not what you may think), as well as specific travel behaviors and desires of this niche.

Farm-to-Table Demand Evolves to Hotel-to-Table

In the pilot episode of Portlandia, an IFC show that mocks the hipster culture of Portland, Oregon, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein want to know precisely where their meal came from and travel to talk to the farmer who raised their chicken named Colin before they eat it. “The chicken you’ll be enjoying tonight. Here are his papers. The chicken is a heritage breed, a woodland-raised chicken that’s been fed a diet of sheep’s milk, soy, and hazelnuts,” the waitress says.

Maybe it’s an exaggeration but in the past decade, the demand for hyperlocal, farm-to-table dining has grown from a trend to an expectation. Now farm-to-table has gone a step further: Hotel-to-table, you might call it. With gardens and a few steps from their kitchens, they infuse an authentic sense of place into their cuisine and eliminate “food miles” in an effort for sustainability.

“It’s more than a trend, it’s a market cycle and as a result there’s a maturation to the process,” says Loren Gray, founder of the Hospitality Digital Marketing show and former restaurant owner turned consultant. “They’ve invested in rooftops to offer a sustainable variety of unique things they can feature for their menu.”

Gray explores the way “hotel-to-table” is changing what the local farming industry grows and even where it’s grown.

For the latest news, videos, and podcasts in the Hospitality Industry, be sure to subscribe to our industry publication.

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Twitter – @HospitalityMKSL

Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale

LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale

Your experts belong here

Every story in MarketScale Hospitality starts with a company putting its general managers, operations leads, and brand teams on the record. Buyers are already reading this topic. The only question is whose experts they find.

Owners and operators buy from people who understand the property, and your teams prove it in their own words.

Book DemoSee how it works15 minutes, straight to a calendar.
B2B Weekly

The week in Hospitality, and sixteen other industries, every Monday.

Ten stories, one-line takes, five minutes. Free.

Hospitality: are you visible to AI?

Before they reach out, Hospitality buyers ask AI engines which vendors to trust. Explore how your experts, customers, and partners can become useful content for buyers and AI search.

Free Trial

You just read one Hospitality expert. Your company is full of them.

This article was produced through MarketScale. The same platform turns your general managers, operations leads, and brand teams into the articles, video, and social content Hospitality buyers are searching for. Start a free trial and see it with your own people. For qualifying companies, no credit card, no demo required.

NPS +73 · 1,000+ creators · 38+ countries

What your free trial includes

Hands-on access to the MarketScale platform
Media requests to your crowd, remote recording, AI writing tools
No demo required. No credit card.
For qualifying companies. Company confirmation required.

More Hospitality Insights

Hotel Effectiveness: HPOR gains continued through H1 2026

Hotel Effectiveness: HPOR gains continued through H1 2026

Hotels cut labor hours per occupied room in H1 2026: 3.1% at full service, 3.5% at select service. Gains shrank in Q2. With hourly wages up 2.9% to 3.3%, holding labor cost per room flat may require further hour savings.

  • 01Select-service HPOR improved 5.1% year over year in Q1, then the gain narrowed to 1.8% in Q2. The report says that pattern reflects how hard it is to sustain gains as occupancy and workloads grow.
  • 02Hourly wages rose 2.9% to 3.3% while hours per occupied room fell 3.1% to 3.5%. That suggests the productivity gains could roughly offset the raises on a per-room basis.
  • 03For operators watching second-half data, select-service gains that stay below the pace of wage growth could push labor cost per occupied room back up.

Sep 26, 2026

If a competitor's move triggers your rate change, that is market-based pricing, not dynamic

If a competitor's move triggers your rate change, that is market-based pricing, not dynamic

Lighthouse writer Joe Hanly published a ten-strategy hotel revenue management guide on Hotel News Resource on September 8, ranking real-time dynamic pricing first. Its most useful content is a test: a hotel whose rate changes mostly follow a competitor's move is running market-based pricing, whatever it is called internally. A companion explainer says audit the compset and rate plans first.

  • 01Market-based and dynamic pricing both watch competitors; the line Lighthouse draws is whether a competitor's rate is the trigger or one input alongside local events, booking pace and market trends.
  • 02Properties that have gone years without a structured rate-plan review often carry more active plans than anyone tracks, and those legacy floor rates and stay restrictions sit under any pricing engine layered on top.

Sep 18, 2026

STR: Summer 2025 was tracking as weakest in four years

STR: Summer 2025 was tracking as weakest in four years

STR said summer 2025 was the weakest U.S. hotel summer in four years: as of an Aug. 22 weekly report (with two weeks left), hotels had sold 1.4 million fewer room nights than summer 2024 and top 25 market weekday RevPAR was down 2.3% in mid-August. STR said business travel plateaued while leisure held up weekends. Hotel Dive reported widespread U.S. RevPAR growth in Q1 2026, making 2025 the comparison base.

  • 01Weekday performance is a key read on business travel: in the week ending Aug. 16, 2025, top 25 market weekday RevPAR fell 2.3%, per STR; in that same update, non-metro and rural areas posted a 0.7% full-week RevPAR gain.
  • 02The 2025 demand loss was concentrated, not spread evenly: STR traced 45% of the economy-class decline to 10 markets, with Houston and Las Vegas alone near a quarter of it, so a national average can hide a very different local picture.
  • 03The gap between occupancy on the books and occupancy actually realized, flagged by CoStar in Las Vegas, Houston, Philadelphia and Orlando in June 2025, is a sharper thing for a revenue manager to track than headline RevPAR.

Sep 18, 2026

Explore More Hospitality Insights

Read more expert perspectives from across Hospitality.

Browse Hospitality Hub

For B2B teams

Your experts could be publishing here

Stories like this one run on content MarketScale captures from real practitioners. See how your team's expertise becomes coverage in Hospitality and beyond.

Book a Demo

Or call us. No forms required. We pick up. 214-945-2512