The NYU conference as it’s colloquially called is a perennial gathering of the brightest minds and largest capital allocators in hotel real estate. Held annually in New York in the beginning of June, the International Hotel Investment Forum (IHIF) Americas team partners with the Tisch Center of Hospitality at New York University (with Jonathan Tisch himself appearing on stage this year!) to deliver a frenzied two days of educational sessions, panels and networking, with all the major brands represented.
One joking aside that you may have picked up on if you’ve spoken to either of us in person: there are now too many hotel conferences. You could be traveling for 50 out of 52 weeks of the calendar year if you so wanted. While that would be physically exhausting, it’s mentally taxing to even phantom the totality of what’s out there then decide on which conference you want to sacrifice your sleep schedule to attend. Put this way, IHIF NYU is a must.
What’s most important to remember for context here is that in real estate nothing gets done until there’s a deal. Without capital, there’s no ops teams, kitchen equipment orders, quantity surveying, wellness providers, technology vendors. It all flows downhill from the ballet of stacking of equity and debt. That means an international conference where deals get done and there’s a pulse on the specific velocity of transactions becomes increasingly important in an economy where money is tighter and markets are saturated with product.
All that said, after attending this year’s outing, it’s time to take stock of the sessions and numerous meetings to put together the top three hotel investment trends that will ricochet through the industry all the way until next June in New York.
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Trend 1: Disciplined Capital and a Quietly Resurgent Deal Market
The marketed message this year was that capital is back, but from one-on-one meetings, know that it’s smarter than ever. From the numbers as supplied by JLL and Hotel Dive, US hotel transaction volume reached $5.6 billion in Q1 2026, up 14.4% year-over-year, while total hotel transactions increased 35% to 227 deals. Private equity accounted for roughly one-third of all activity, thought, signaling renewed confidence from institutional investors, albeit with more creative deal structures. Globally, hotel investment volumes in 2025 were up 22% from 2023 (as a comp), with the Americas leading growth at 27%.
Still, despite this macro growth, much of it is largely replacement cost. Several investors highlighted acquisitions completed at discounts of 25% to 30% below replacement value, creating a market where many see an opportunity for yield even with a higher interest environment. The consensus from this is that for owners, the absolutely critical KPI and hurdle is DSCR (debt service coverage ratio).
As a stratospheric example of this reframing of the balance sheet, Jefferies’ Michael Bluhm pointed to Tilman Fertitta’s $17.6 billion bid for Caesars Entertainment, supported by roughly $11.9 billion in debt. Deals that would have struggled to secure financing two years ago are now finding support, but behind the scenes they are all on a tight leash and go into any selective underwriting situation by brutally stress-testing the DSCR.
Trend 2: AI Is No Longer a Pilot Project
Calling AI as infrastructure is exactly what an LLM would produce when writing about AI. Importantly in this ‘data is the new oil’ economy, executives stand to gain the most by turbocharging their horsepower, while many have yet to properly allocate IT budget towards AI token spend.
What was particularly interesting, however, was the growing divide around labor implications. Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin ruminated that around one-third of corporate jobs could be replaced by AI within the next few years. Meanwhile, Mark Hoplamazian and Elie Maalouf took a more measured stance – tool versus replacement.
Personally, we believe the more important element for hospitality is not labor reduction but orchestration. The smart hotel brands are rapidly deploying dozens of AI-powered workflows across reservations, revenue management, marketing, finance and guest communications.
This can work wonders to ‘upvalue’ the work that teams are doing to personalize service, innovate offerings and differentiate a property. In this sense, AI can hone the P&L like never before by shaking out many of the inherent inefficiencies in hotel operations.
A problem on the horizon is governance. This is where Agent Management Platforms (AMPs) will become one of the most significant new software categories. As hotels deploy more agents across multiple frontier models or their own ontology with small language models (SLMs), they will need a governance layer that determines which model performs which task, what data it can access and how much each workflow costs (read: “token creep”).
Trend 3: Branded Residences Have Become a Financing Strategy
For years, branded residences were viewed primarily as a luxury or prestige play. Now, however, they can be essential to getting a project off the ground and are often viewed as a development financing tool.
The mic drop macro for branded resi remains obvious: branded residences command an average 33% pricing premium over comparable non-branded properties. More importantly, developers can often pre-sell a significant portion of residential inventory before construction is completed, generating capital that helps fund the hotel component of a mixed-use project.
According to Savills, the category continues to expand at an extraordinary pace. Global branded residence schemes were grew from 764 developments in late 2024 to approximately 910 by the end of 2025, representing 19% annual growth. Looking further ahead, another 837 projects are already contracted through 2032, bringing the projected global total to nearly 1,750 developments.
What is changing, though, is the forecasting around long-term value amidst an explosion of competition. Increasingly, investors are distinguishing between projects that simply borrow a luxury brand’s name and those that actually deliver a branded lifestyle experience worth of extended stays and second homes. As this slice of hospitality real estate, fee structures, operating agreements and owner expectations are evolving in stride.
Without a PhD thesis researching this subject matter, we can say that there are only so many people still willing to spend on branded residences, whether as primary dwellings or as investment plays. It’s an sigmoid curve, not a hockey stick, so the question is which part of the S are we on.
The Bottom Line
Altogether, this points to branded residences entering a second phrase of smarter, more specific growth. And this is emblematic of the entire hotel industry at present: windows of opportunity open but are rapidly seized upon.
The smart ones now are the hoteliers, developers, investors, executives, managers and vendors who are nimble enough to pivot on a dime and shoot their shot, with nearly every trending topic – AI, branded resi or others – akin to a buzz-beater in terms of which companies can reap the rewards.
