Why hospitality is the best place to invest right now

Investors, operators, brands, and bankers gathered earlier this month for the 2022 NYU Hospitality Investment Conference in New York, where the optimism was palpable. Despite the bearish market environment (see my webinar for views on the economy), we believe the hospitality industry is well-positioned for the year ahead and stands to benefit from secular tailwinds for years to come. According to reports from the conference, we aren't the only ones bullish on the outlook for hospitality, and the data agrees.

Don’t believe us? Here is a quote from Tyler Henritze, Head of Strategic Investments at Blackstone: "The fundamentals around hospitality are incredibly strong. We are looking at how we can invest more in hospitality." While investors in office, retail, and other types of commercial real estate are having hard conversations, Tyler shared, "the outlook is much clearer with hotels. There are very powerful technological and demographic trends that show the short-term and long-term potential in hospitality."

Why? Jay Shah, CEO of Hersha Hospitality Trust, says, "the micro economy of hospitality is decoupled from the macroeconomy." To further this point, STR President Amanda Hite displayed data pointing to continued growth in the years ahead and shared, "we do not expect an upcoming recession to impact the hotel and travel industry the same way past recessions did." In fact, STR projects that average daily room demand will reach an all-time high in 2023 and advance further in 2024.

With hospitality poised to outperform other real estate asset classes, we are confident that short-term rentals (one of the fastest growing asset classes within hospitality) will provide significant opportunities for investors and operators that understand the market and are able to act intelligently during dislocations moving forward.

Stayed tuned for a series of updates from the team at Stomp Capital over the coming weeks - we have BIG things in the works!

You can also read more about the conference here.