If your industry feed looks anything like mine, you’ve seen the flood of takes about the “recession-proof” luxury market. Powell and Aucello just reported that Hawaiʻi luxury RevPAR is up 9% year-to-date, even as upscale and upper-midscale properties are each down 14%. Nationally, STR shows the same pattern: luxury is holding, while the middle softens.
Then there’s Rafat Ali’s recent “Enshittification of American Travel” post on LinkedIn (worth a read), where he argues the industry has shifted from democratization to pure extraction.
Put that all together, and the questions get sharper: How long can the luxury tier stay insulated while the middle gets squeezed? Are middle-income travelers trading up, and taking fewer trips or going into debt to do it? Or is the wealth gap simply showing up in hotel performance?
Whether it holds or cracks, luxury’s outperformance is starting to feel like a signal.
BTW- My word for 2025 is now “enshitification.”
