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, hospitality industry leaders are looking toward 2026 with careful optimism. Increasing functional costs are slated to challenge owners this year and lower-tier segments could struggle amid a growing wealth bifurcation.

And through everything, hotel business are anticipated to strengthen their portfolios with new brand offerings and partnerships. As the year gets underway, Hotel Dive talked with hospitality leaders from varying corners of the industry about their 2026 predictions. Below are the top trends anticipated to impact hotel operations, efficiency, net system development and more this year.

Overall incomes, wages and advantages paid by U.S. hotels increased 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 a roughly 3% year-over-year increase, per AHLA. For hotel owners, increasing labor expenses present a difficulty to net operating income development, Kevin Davis, Americas CEO at JLL Hotels & Hospitality, informed Hotel Dive.

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"It is an outright concern." Increasing labor costs have actually been a difficulty for hoteliers for years, Davis stated, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, hotel labor costs have increased 15.3% from 2019 to 2025, surpassing the 12.8% growth in overall operating income, according to AHLA. In recent years, thousands of union hotel workers have actually 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 by means of Getty Images In 2026, Davis kept in mind, union negotiations will be "front and center" in New York City, where the New York City Hotel and Video gaming Trades Council's union agreement with the Hotel Association of New York City is set to end in July.

Last year, the union backed New york city City's freshly elected Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, who worked on a guarantee to raise New york city City's minimum wage to $30 per hour by 2030. Hotel market associations, including AHLA, have denounced similar legislation across the nation, including the just recently passed $30 wage ordinance in Los Angeles. "Need has actually not kept up with this pace," she said. Incomes, salaries and payroll-related expenses paid by hotels now account for more than 32% of total earnings, according to AHLA.

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As more hotel guests turn to synthetic intelligence to improve their travel experience, reserving hotels straight through big language models (LLMs) may be next, hospitality professionals said. Agentic commerce a process by which autonomous AI agents act on behalf of a customer to discover, compare and finish purchases is a trend that has accelerated 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. A smaller percentage (57%) said they 'd be most likely to utilize it for scheduling travel. That number is growing, Jonathan Kletzel, PwC's travel, transport and logistics leader, informed Hotel Dive. "The variety of consumers that are browsing [by means of LLMs] for services and products in travel has actually ballooned in the last 12 months and is accelerating every day," Kletzel said, including that inevitably, hotels will "take a hard look at how they can enable commerce and transactions through agentic [AI]"" [Brands] can construct on the trust they already have if they do a great task with how they handle AI in 2026." Michael Klein Head of retail, travel and hospitality product marketing at Talkdesk To stay competitive with direct booking, bigger multibrand hotel companies will "embed LLMs into their own brand sites and mobile apps, and alter the way the consumer searches," Kletzel said.

"If you are not discoverable in an LLM search result which lots of brands aren't, and this is the big panic that they're all going through today customers aren't going to consider you," he stated. Michael Klein, head of retail, travel and hospitality item marketing at AI consumer experience platform Talkdesk, similarly informed Hotel Dive that hospitality gamers require to guarantee their property details is being indexed by LLMs to appear in traveler inquiries.