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With No End to the Pandemic in Sight What Can Hotels Expect?: Say Yes To Travel

On this episode of Say Yes To Travel, host Sarah Dandashy sat down with Calvin Tilokee, the Director of Revenue Management at a 5 star boutique hotel in New York City to discuss the current state of the hotel industry. Numbers are down everywhere, but major cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have been hit…

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With No End to the Pandemic in Sight What Can Hotels Expect?: Say Yes To Travel

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On this episode of Say Yes To Travel, host Sarah Dandashy sat down with Calvin Tilokee, the Director of Revenue Management at a 5 star boutique hotel in New York City to discuss the current state of the hotel industry. Numbers are down everywhere, but major cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have been hit particularly hard. With a good number of hotels opting to close, the few that remain open are seeing anywhere from 5-11% occupancies. These numbers are unprecedented! Some hotels have laid off their employees, others have been furloughed, and there are a few that are able to make sure with a bare minimum.

With no end of the Stay at Home mandate in sight, this is a scary time for hoteliers. What does the future hold? How will things change? What can we expect? Though there is some speculation on how this all will play out, with a long 18 month recovery, there is still much that is up in the air. Calvin shares his insights on what lessons we can learn from Covid-19.

The travel and tourism sector makes up 1/10th of the global job market. The hit is taking will inevitably have a huge economic impact that will take years to fully recover.

Regardless of when we are able to go back to work, this will be a slow climb back to the bustling travel world we once knew–anywhere from 18-24 months.

New protocols will likely develop from this, especially new cleaning requirements and possible hybrid roles to cut costs until occupancy comes back.

Business travelers will be the first to get back on the road and travel. Leisure travelers, influenced by financial struggles and COVID-19 wariness, will trickle back into the market.

It is safe to assume that domestic travel and roadtrips will be popular in the months after resolving the Pandemic.

Say Yes To Travel has a new episode every Thursday!

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

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  • 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.

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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 the cleaner read on corporate demand: in the week ending Aug. 16, 2025, top 25 market weekday RevPAR fell 2.3%, per STR; in that same STR update, non-metro and rural areas posted a 0.7% full-week RevPAR gain.
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  • 01Hotel Business describes LIFT as a proprietary tool that Aimbridge has launched across its own portfolio, which turns labor analytics into a point of comparison between third-party operators.
  • 02Housekeeping and laundry were where pilot hotels saw the biggest productivity gains, which suggests demand-driven scheduling tools have the most room to act in departments where daily workload swings with occupancy.
  • 03Aimbridge has not published numeric pilot results; the signal to watch is whether it releases labor-cost or GOP flow-through figures from the full rollout, which would give owners a real benchmark.

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