Analyzing Restaurant Market Share Data for 2026

Listen to the post 17 minutes This audio is auto-generated. Please let us understand if you have feedback. Following a year of broad economic unpredictability that stifled development for hotels, hospitality industry leaders are looking toward 2026 with cautious optimism. Increasing functional expenses are slated to challenge owners this year and lower-tier sectors might have a hard time amid a growing wealth bifurcation.

And through it all, hotel companies are expected to fortify their portfolios with new brand name offerings and partnerships. As the year gets underway, Hotel Dive spoke to hospitality leaders from varying corners of the market about their 2026 forecasts. Below are the leading patterns expected to impact hotel operations, efficiency, net unit development and more this year.

Overall incomes, salaries and benefits paid by U.S. hotels rose to $127 billion in 2025, according to data from the American Hotel & Accommodations Association, shown Hotel Dive. In 2026, that figure is forecasted to reach $131 billion, representing an approximately 3% year-over-year boost, per AHLA. For hotel owners, increasing labor costs position a challenge to net operating income growth, Kevin Davis, Americas CEO at JLL Hotels & Hospitality, told Hotel Dive.

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"It is an absolute issue." Rising labor costs have actually been a challenge for hoteliers for many years, Davis said, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, hotel labor costs have actually increased 15.3% from 2019 to 2025, exceeding the 12.8% development in overall operating income, according to AHLA. Over the last few years, countless union hotel employees have gone on strike demanding greater incomes in order to keep up with the increasing expense of living in places such as California, Hawaii and Las Vegas.

3, 2024 in San Francisco, California. Justin Sullivan by means of Getty Images In 2026, Davis noted, union settlements will be "front and center" in New York City, where the New York City Hotel and Gaming Trades Council's union contract with the Hotel Association of New York City is set to end in July.

In 2015, the union backed New york city City's recently elected Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, who operated on a pledge to raise New York City's base pay to $30 per hour by 2030. Hotel industry associations, consisting of AHLA, have denounced similar legislation throughout the nation, including the just recently passed $30 wage ordinance in Los Angeles. "Need has not stayed up to date with this pace," she said. "We're also seeing these difficulties intensified by legislation that targets hotel operations, such as severe labor and licensing policies like the New York City City Safe Hotels Act. When demand is falling and expenses are soaring, the mathematics just does not include up." Salaries, earnings and payroll-related costs paid by hotels now represent more than 32% of total income, according to AHLA.

Expert Methods to Boost Market Share via Expansion

As more hotel visitors turn to synthetic intelligence to improve their travel experience, reserving hotels directly through big language designs (LLMs) may be next, hospitality experts stated. Agentic commerce a process by which autonomous AI representatives act upon behalf of a customer to discover, compare and finish purchases is a trend that has actually sped up throughout markets like retail.

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According to PwC's 2025 Holiday Outlook report, 76% of millennials stated they're most likely to use AI for travel suggestions. That number is growing, Jonathan Kletzel, PwC's travel, transport and logistics leader, told Hotel Dive. Michael Klein Head of retail, travel and hospitality item marketing at Talkdesk To stay competitive with direct booking, bigger multibrand hotel companies will "embed LLMs into their own brand name sites and mobile apps, and change the way the consumer searches," Kletzel said.

"If you are not visible in an LLM search engine result which numerous brands aren't, and this is the big panic that they're all going through right now customers aren't going to consider you," he said. Michael Klein, head of retail, travel and hospitality product marketing at AI customer experience platform Talkdesk, likewise informed Hotel Dive that hospitality players need to guarantee their home details is being indexed by LLMs to appear in tourist inquiries.