Castle Resorts & Hotels is quietly expanding its hotel footprint, adding new Oʻahu management contracts and soft-brand conversions as it builds momentum through steady deals rather than headline-grabbing trophy assets.
Intent vs. Execution
Maui’s Bill 9 aims to phase out more than 6,000 short-term rentals, but rejected zoning carve-outs and likely court challenges highlight the ongoing collision between housing policy and the island’s visitor lodging reality.
Right Pocket, Left Pocket, Slow Progress
Hawaiʻi’s Green Fee advisory council has proposed $126.4M in resilience and tourism projects, but a dispute over bond funding versus direct fee revenue, and new transparency demands, signals the program’s first political test.
Deep Dish, Wrigley Field, and Highest Hotel Taxes
Chicago hotels are backing a tax increase to fund tourism marketing, a move that echoes Hawaiʻi’s TAT history and raises a broader question about why destinations must tax visitors heavily and still fight to fund demand generation.
The Regulators are Sniffing Around Our Comp Sets
Hotel benchmarking tools like STR are facing antitrust scrutiny in the U.S. and UK, raising questions about whether analyzing historical competitor data, or future AI pricing tools, could be viewed as reducing market competition.
Another day, another brand
IHG’s new Noted Collection pushes major hotel brand counts even higher, raising a broader question: are expanding brand portfolios about traveler choice, or a strategy to capture more hotels, fees, and market share?
The Adara–Sojern “Two Brand” Strategy Didn’t Last Long
RateGain is integrating Adara’s traveler intent data into Sojern’s advertising platform, a move that consolidates data and distribution power in the travel marketing funnel as the company tests its ability to digest recent acquisitions.
Claude is Having a Moment
Anthropic’s Claude is gaining momentum with developers and enterprise users, positioning itself less as a chatbot and more as an AI work layer for coding and workflows, challenging ChatGPT’s early dominance.
AI Will Replace OTAs… Eventually
OpenAI is reportedly stepping back from building booking checkout inside ChatGPT, signaling that while AI may reshape travel discovery, OTAs like Booking and Expedia remain firmly in control of transactions, for now.
The browser wars just got agentic
The browser wars are back, this time with AI. OpenAI’s Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet aren’t just browsers; they’re assistants that read your screen, handle tasks, and reshape how we search and work online.
