Topline
Major hospitality companies Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham cut their full-year outlooks this week, citing the challenging macro environment and softening consumer demand amid concerns travelers are holding off on trips as the summer travel season approaches.
Along with airlines, hotels are seeing weaker demand for travel due to consumer hesitancy in an … More
Key Facts
On Thursday, Hyatt Hotels and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts each adjusted their full-year room revenue outlooks downward by several percentage points.
On his company’s first-quarter earnings call, Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian told investors “the near term is definitely disrupted” with bookings down “in the high single digits versus last year, over the last few weeks.”
Wyndham CEO Geoff Ballotti told Wall Street analysts “consumer sentiment resulting from the macro uncertainty” was weighing on the leisure segment.
On Tuesday, Hilton also cut its forecast for 2025 room revenue growth to 0% to 2%, down from its previous 2% to 3% target.
Marriott and Choice Hotels report their first-quarter earnings next week.
The Dow Jones U.S. Hotel Index is down 14% in the past three months.
Key Background
Consumer confidence plummeted in April to pandemic-level lows, which has Americans pulling back discretionary spending on items like vacations. Big data on credit card spending indicates that President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement on April 2 was an inflection point. Year-over-year growth in U.S. hotel sales fell by about 9%—from growing at a rate of about 3% at the end of March to shrinking by 6% by mid-April, according to an analysis of over 110 million anonymized credit and debit cards by Consumer Edge, a provider of consumer spending data. This “meaningful shift may suggest travelers are starting to hold off on booking trips,” Michael Gunther, VP and head of insights at Consumer Edge, told Forbes.
What We Don’t Know
Whether consumer confidence will decline further before the peak summer travel period. “While seasonal patterns did hold with absolute spend rising from January through March, that uplift does not appear to be holding in April, a potential troubling sign for the hotel industry as well as the broader consumer landscape,” Gunther told Forbes, adding travelers “might be deferring vacation plans until the economic outlook becomes clearer.” On Hilton’s Q1 earnings call, CEO Christopher Nassetta noted “weaker trends have continued into the second quarter.”
Big Number
$747 billion. That’s how much U.S. hotel guests spent in 2024, according to data from the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
Tangent
Major U.S. airlines were the first to send up warning flares that travel demand is softening. Nearly every major airline—Delta, American, Southwest, Alaska and JetBlue—has withdrawn its full-year outlook, while United offered two forecasts—one if there is a recession and a second if the economy stabilizes.
Further Reading
Hotel Stocks Hit By Tariff Turndown (Forbes)
Americans Are Pulling Back On Travel Spending In 2025, New Data Shows (Forbes)
