How to Scale Your Restaurant Brand Efficiently

, hospitality industry leaders are looking toward 2026 with cautious optimism. Rising operational costs are slated to challenge owners this year and lower-tier sectors could struggle amid a growing wealth bifurcation.

And through everything, hotel companies are expected to strengthen their portfolios with new brand offerings and collaborations. As the year gets underway, Hotel Dive consulted with hospitality leaders from varying corners of the market about their 2026 predictions. Below are the leading patterns expected to effect hotel operations, efficiency, net system growth and more this year.

Total salaries, incomes and advantages paid by U.S. hotels increased to $127 billion in 2025, according to data from the American Hotel & Lodging Association, shown Hotel Dive. In 2026, that figure is projected to reach $131 billion, representing an approximately 3% year-over-year increase, per AHLA. For hotel owners, rising labor expenses posture a challenge to net operating income development, Kevin Davis, Americas CEO at JLL Hotels & Hospitality, told Hotel Dive.

How to Scale Your Hospitality Brand Efficiently

"It is an outright issue." Rising labor expenses have actually been an obstacle for hoteliers for several years, Davis stated, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, hotel labor costs have increased 15.3% from 2019 to 2025, exceeding the 12.8% development in total operating revenue, according to AHLA. Recently, countless union hotel employees have gone on strike requiring greater salaries in order to stay up to date with the increasing cost of living in locations such as California, Hawaii and Las Vegas.

3, 2024 in San Francisco, California. Justin Sullivan via Getty Images In 2026, Davis kept in mind, union negotiations will be "front and center" in New York City, where the New York Hotel and Video gaming Trades Council's union agreement with the Hotel Association of New York City is set to expire in July.

Last year, the union backed New york city City's newly elected Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, who operated on a pledge to raise New york city City's base pay to $30 per hour by 2030. Hotel market associations, including AHLA, have actually denounced comparable legislation across the nation, consisting of the just recently passed $30 wage ordinance in Los Angeles. "Demand has actually not kept up with this speed," 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 Safe Hotels Act. When need is falling and costs are skyrocketing, the math merely does not build up." Salaries, wages and payroll-related expenditures paid by hotels now represent more than 32% of overall income, according to AHLA.

Top Profitable Investment Prospects for 2026

As more hotel visitors turn to artificial intelligence to boost their travel experience, scheduling hotels directly through large language models (LLMs) might be next, hospitality professionals stated. Agentic commerce a process by which autonomous AI agents act on behalf of a consumer to discover, compare and complete purchases is a trend that has sped up across markets like retail.

Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

According to PwC's 2025 Holiday Outlook report, 76% of millennials said they're most likely to utilize AI for travel recommendations. A smaller sized portion (57%) said they 'd be likely to use it for booking travel. That number is growing, Jonathan Kletzel, PwC's travel, transport and logistics leader, informed Hotel Dive. "The variety of customers that are browsing [via LLMs] for items and services in travel has actually ballooned in the last 12 months and is accelerating every day," Kletzel stated, including that inevitably, hotels will "take a difficult take a look at how they can enable commerce and transactions through agentic [AI]"" [Brands] can develop on the trust they currently have if they do a great job with how they handle AI in 2026." Michael Klein Head of retail, travel and hospitality item marketing at Talkdesk To remain competitive with direct booking, bigger multibrand hotel business will "embed LLMs into their own brand websites and mobile apps, and change the way the customer searches," Kletzel stated.

"If you are not discoverable in an LLM search results page which numerous brands aren't, and this is the huge panic that they're all going through today consumers aren't going to consider you," he said. Michael Klein, head of retail, travel and hospitality item marketing at AI client experience platform Talkdesk, similarly informed Hotel Dive that hospitality gamers need to guarantee their residential or commercial property info is being indexed by LLMs to appear in traveler questions.