Coll new president at Mullen Hospitality
NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pennsylvania – Mullen Hospitality Management (MHM) has appointed Javier Coll as president to lead the company’s new third-party management strategy with a focus on repositioning and developing beach resorts under leading luxury and upper-upscale global brands.
Coll, a founding partner of AMResorts, will also play a key role in raising capital for the company’s first and second investment funds focused on beach resort opportunities in Mexico and the Caribbean.
A globally recognized hospitality executive and real estate investor, Coll brings more than 30 years of international hospitality and investment experience with deep expertise in branded resort development across the Caribbean and Latin America.
In his new role, he will oversee strategic growth initiatives, capital partnerships, and operational performance across MHM’s expanding resort portfolio, while advancing the company’s regional pipeline in high-growth leisure destinations.
“Javier’s proven ability to structure complex cross-border investments, reposition large-scale resort assets, and drive brand partnerships positions MHM for significant long-term growth,” said MHM and Mullen Real Estate Capital CEO Jeff Mullen.
Coll has extensive experience structuring cross-border capital partnerships between U.S. and Spanish investors and executing complex repositioning projects, including large-scale resort renovations and all-inclusive conversions. His expertise spans asset management, capital sourcing, brand negotiations, and operational optimization.
Prior to joining MHM, Coll advised financial groups, private equity firms, REITs, and investment funds. He previously served as global head of growth for the Hyatt Inclusive Collection. He held several senior leadership roles at Hyatt, including group president of Business Development and Strategy, executive vice president, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer.
At AMResorts (later acquired by Hyatt) and Unlimited Vacation Club – Coll played a pivotal role in expanding the company’s presence across Mexico, the Caribbean, and Europe, overseeing the acquisition, development, and management of more than 100 resorts while helping drive record growth and profitability.
“I’m honored to join Mullen Hospitality Management at such an exciting stage of its evolution,” Coll said. “The company’s strategic vision, strong partnerships, and focus on premier leisure destinations create a powerful platform for growth. I look forward to working with the team to expand our portfolio and deliver exceptional resort experiences across the region.”
NATIONAL REPORT – Artificial intelligence (AI) is yielding results for hotels as brands move from experimentation to deployment.
Early adopters report improvements in areas including revenue, efficiency and resource management, according to a recent report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG). These gains come as travel companies grapple with AI investment decisions and how best to measure ROI.
Some companies are already reporting compelling AI returns. Hotels are seeing revenue per available room gains up to 15% after implementing AI-powered pricing systems that adjust prices in real time based on demand signals such as booking pace, competitor rates and local events.
In operations, predictive housekeeping models are helping hotel operators to minimize the impact of rising labor costs. The Ritz-Carlton San Francisco reported a 20% increase in room-cleaning speed via an AI system that optimizes housekeeping schedules based on checkout timing, guest preferences and staffing levels. At the Four Seasons Peninsula Papagayo, AI waste tracking tools in eight months yielded a 50% reduction in food waste.
While fewer than one in 10 hospitality companies are leveraging cutting-edge AI to produce big results, a larger share of hotels is approaching AI as a work in progress.
“Twenty-five percent of hospitality firms fell into the ‘AI-scaling’ category, meaning they have an AI strategy that is starting to produce real returns across multiple organization activities,” reads BCG ’s AI-First Hotels: Faster to Build, Leaner to Operate, and Richer in Customer Experience report.
These AI-scaling companies have prioritized using AI across several operational areas, including marketing and revenue management, guest engagement and property operations. Applications range from hyper-targeted offers and dynamic pricing to chatbots and tools to optimize staffing, inventory and maintenance.
The report predicts the next coming phase of AI adoption will target additional parts of the hotel value chain. Emerging applications include systems designed to strengthen risk management and safety processes and tools that help companies improve construction planning and capital allocation.
Scaling AI across hospitality
While early gains are emerging, the report cited several structural challenges as barriers to broader AI adoption.
With many AI applications still untested, hotel companies remain hesitant to invest in the AI fundamentals that could eventually yield the most significant gains. Competing priorities may produce faster and more obvious results, but data cleaning and standardization and system integration are essential.
Many hotel companies also operate with fragmented technology systems, including separate platforms for property management, point-of-sale transactions, customer relationship management and loyalty programs. Hotels will need to integrate these systems and build a centralized data platform that creates a single source of truth, according to BCG.
Hotels also face staffing challenges, with the tourism sector lagging behind other industries in AI talent. Just 2.9% of full-time travel and tourism employees are skilled in AI, compared to 21% in technology and media. However, the tourism workforce is growing increasingly AI savvy. The share of full-time hospitality workers with AI skills is increasing nearly 5% year over year.
Investment in AI-forward technology and employees will drive the next stage of AI development and gains.
Chinese New Year in 2026 welcomes the Year of the Horse, a year symbolizing perseverance, vitality and substantial momentum, which indeed was reflected in the Chinese markets’ hotel performance over the festive holiday.
This year, the Chinese public holidays ran over nine days, including an extra day. Running from Feb. 15 to 23, this was the longest Chinese New Year holiday period in history.
Good fortune spread through all days of the week as occupancy outperformed last year on every day of the holiday period, with gains ranging from 4% to 8%. Growth was strongest at the start of the holiday before gradually easing toward the end.
The extra holiday before Lunar New Year Eve this year also helped occupancy grow above the same period in 2025.
Rate gains were also impressive and outperformed every day of the week apart from Day 6 and 7, when occupancy growth also started to weaken. Growth per day was between 2% to 7%, again gradually reducing as the holiday progressed. By Days 6 and 7, average daily rate declined relative to 2025 at -1% and -2%, respectively.
The additional day prior to Chinese New Year Eve supported the rise in pricing power and demand, as holidaymakers opted to begin the festivities earlier in the week.
Demand was the primary revenue per available room growth driver, with the metric increasing all days over the holiday period despite rate declining at the end of the week.
All classes prospered, surpassing last year’s RevPAR with double-digit growth. The only decline was luxury occupancy, which dipped 1% against the 2025 New Year. However, luxury ADR had the biggest increase, tying with midscale and economy rate growth at 20%.
The pricing power for high-end hotels surged over the New Year period. Luxury ADR grew significantly even without major increases in occupancy.
The anticipated holiday hotspots included the winter destinations of Xinjiang and Heilongjiang, the coastal favorite Sanya and Yunnan, known for its cultural richness and diversity. Three out of four markets had significant growth, all mainly rate-driven.
An alternative skiing destination to the more established Heilongjiang, Xinjiang appeals to local enthusiasts who are looking for a less costly option with fewer crowds.
On top of Heilongjiang serving as a pricier option, and also taking into consideration the travel cost for domestic tourists to get there, it didn’t help that due to slightly warmer conditions the Harbin Ice-Snow World closed on Feb. 21, three days before the end of the public holiday period.
Looking at the wider picture, 18 key markets grew RevPAR between 7% to 31% year over year, indicating share of domestic demand is more evenly distributed within the country. Three out of eighteen markets — Shenzhen, Zhengzhou and Wuxi — grew during the Chinese New Year holidays in 2025 and continued to strengthen in 2026.
At the top and bottom of the key markets were tier 1 cities Shenzhen and Guangzhou. While the variance between RevPAR is wide, both markets enjoyed increasing demand and even stronger rate growth. Beijing ranks closer to Guangzhou, but Shanghai growth stands out from the four with ADR growing 18% and occupancy up 1%.
Key markets outside of Mainland China had higher growth in January, a month before the Chinese New Year holiday. Incheon and Seoul occupancy peaked twice at the beginning of the year, then normalized by mid-February. Singapore showed a similar trend, with occupancy slightly increasing over the holiday period. Meanwhile, Hong Kong SAR started the year strong but then declined during the holidays. Macau occupancy continued to gradually grow but did not see any particular impact from the new year.
Both Japan and Thailand have been closely monitored due to challenges faced with inbound travel from China. Thai markets, Bangkok and Phuket, both reported good occupancy growth during the holiday period, although the improvement started earlier in the month.
Late last year, Chinese airlines extended flight cancellations to Japan through the first quarter of 2026, with the most cancellations in February. Hotel occupancy across key markets was soft toward the beginning of the year, but by the beginning of February, occupancy started to trend up. Some of this growth overlaps with the Chinese New Year, but this period also coincides with a long weekend in Japan, as the Emperor’s birthday fell on the last day of the China public holiday period, Feb. 23.
The Year of the Horse provided the boost for Mainland China markets to start a new year with positive and energetic momentum. The longer holiday period set a foundation for rate confidence and the propensity of Chinese holidaymakers to opt for domestic destinations drives the demand needed to attain a successful new year holiday period.
After a seemingly bright start to the year, U.S.-based hotel companies ran into a number of unexpected challenges through 2025.
Natural disasters, economic uncertainty, new government policies and geopolitical strife were among the many disruptions to travel demand and business processes during the year.
Read below to see what executives at publicly traded hotel brand companies and real estate investment trusts had to say about the obstacles and how they affected hotel performance.
Tony Capuano, President and CEO, Marriott International
“In the U.S. and Canada, fourth quarter [revenue per available room] was around flat. Luxury again saw solid growth, which was offset by declines in the select-service tier. Leisure transient RevPAR rose 2% in the quarter, while group RevPAR increased 1%. These gains were offset by a 3% decline in business transient RevPAR largely due to a meaningful decline in government RevPAR in the quarter. Government RevPAR was down over 30% during the 43-day U.S. government shutdown, though it has since moderated to down around 15%.”
Christopher Nassetta, President and CEO, Hilton
"Turning to results for the fourth quarter. System-wide RevPAR increased 50 basis points year-over-year as strong international performance and solid group demand were offset by softer U.S. government demand and weaker international inbound into the U.S.
"In the quarter, leisure transient RevPAR was up 2.3%, driven by international strength, especially in [Europe, the Middle East and Africa]. Business transient RevPAR was down 2.1%, driven primarily by headwinds from the U.S. government shutdown. Group RevPAR was up 2.6%, driven by strong international group growth and company meeting demand. System-wide RevPAR for the quarter was strongest in December, up 1.7%, with strength in leisure and group and a meaningful pickup in business transient. Positive trends continued into early 2026 with group leading, including strong in-month group bookings, solid leisure demand and continued business-transient improvement."
Scott Oaksmith, Chief Financial Officer, Choice Hotels International
“Our global RevPAR declined 4.6% year over year in the fourth quarter on a currency neutral basis, as discussed on the prior call. This was driven by the tougher hurricane comparison in the U.S. Southeast from the prior year.
“Our fourth-quarter results were also affected by the government shutdown and continued softness in international inbound travel. Despite these pressures, we achieved occupancy share index gains versus our competitors on a full-year basis, excluding hurricane-related distortions.”
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts
"We still view that $1.2 trillion infrastructure spend as a real multiyear tailwind for us. And additionally, it will get back to driving that 150 basis points of additional RevPAR growth that it did for us in the [fourth quarter] of '24 pre-DOGE and pre-government shutdown, which slowed us down this year. And we're also very encouraged about hotels, and there are so many private investment projects, infrastructure projects, especially data centers and semiconductor fabs, which, as we talked about, continue to outperform from a RevPAR and our [retail price index] standpoint. Excluding the government and the Fed rooms, which were obviously down, as I mentioned, infrastructure demand, it kept pace. It helped drive, we believe, our weekday economy occupancy improvement that we saw each month of [the fourth quarter]."
Jon Bortz, Chairman and CEO, Pebblebrook Hotel Trust
“Government policies that created economic uncertainty or downright negative impacts like the freeze on government travel got in the way, along with the government shutdown later in the year. This is very evident in the STR industry numbers. Industry demand started out the year well but began to weaken in February following a deterioration in our relations with Canada. Then it turned negative in April, coinciding with Liberation Day and heightened policy uncertainty then worsened in October and November with the government shutdown, cutback on airlift and fears about flight safety.
“Fortunately, once the shutdown ended, travel began to recover with strong leisure trends arriving with Thanksgiving and continuing all the way through the Christmas and New Year's holidays.
“The industry also faced a worsening international trade imbalance all year with international outbound travel from the U.S. continuing to grow in 2025, while international inbound travel to the U.S. declined. International outbound travel now sits well above 2019 levels and inbound sits well below 2019 levels. Government travel was also lower than 2024 throughout the year as was government-related travel and government-impacted travel, such as travel associated with healthcare, universities, research and defense.
“The so-called K-shaped economy developed during the year with the upper half of the socioeconomic spectrum seeing their financials improve and therefore, spend more and the bottom half pulled back and focused more on necessities instead of discretionary purchases like travel. This created a clear bifurcation of performance in the hotel industry, with the upper half performing significantly better than the bottom half. Our portfolio, which almost entirely consists of upper-upscale and luxury properties, performed better as a result.
“But the true underlying performance of our portfolio was obscured by the nine-month impact of the L.A. fires and our then-nine properties in that market and by the negative government-related impact on travel to D.C. and San Diego.”
Thomas Baltimore, Jr., President and CEO, Park Hotels & Resorts
"You've got geopolitical and, obviously, we look at what's happening in the Middle East and Iran in the U.S. right now. Inflationary pressures are still there. International travel really hasn't rebounded yet. We're seeing some green shoots, but we're certainly still down pre-pandemic. And the consumer is cautious. And we've got a K-shaped economy right now.
"So look, we think it was prudent to be conservative and cautious for all the reasons that [Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer] Sean [Dell'Orto] outlined, particularly as you went quarter-by-quarter, and obviously, as I give you sort of macro, we should think about the tailwinds, but there are some headwinds out there.
"And if you think about what's happened in the last few years in the sector, first quarter came out to be pretty good. And then for many of us, if not all of us, we saw somewhat of a downward trend. So, we think right now makes sense to just be a little more measured, a little more cautious coming out of the box."
Leslie Hale, President and CEO, RLJ Lodging Trust
“We were pleased with our solid fourth-quarter results, which came in ahead of our expectations despite a choppy operating environment that was further constrained by the protracted government shutdown.
“Government business demand was further impacted during the quarter by the shutdown, primarily affecting our D.C. and Southern California markets. Relative to group, our revenues were down 3% as in the quarter. For the quarter, demand was artificially impacted by the shutdown in October and November. However, group dynamics remain strong, as evidenced by the growth in our group ADR of 4%.”
Jeffrey Donnelly, President and CEO, DiamondRock Hospitality Co.
"Early last year, we were engaged in active discussions around the potential disposition of several DiamondRock properties, largely driven by inbound interest. The uncertainty introduced by Liberation Day understandably paused many of those conversations.
"Over the past six months, however, most of those discussions have resumed. To be clear, we do not expect every asset under review will be sold nor do we feel any pressure to sell. The breadth of interest has been wide, spanning both smaller and larger assets across urban and resort markets."
Justin Knight, President and CEO, Apple Hospitality REIT
“During the year, leisure travel remained strong across our hotel portfolio, while policy uncertainty and a pullback in government travel impacted midweek demand, temporarily disrupting the steady improvement in midweek occupancy that characterized much of 2024.
“Our asset management and hotel teams adjusted strategy to optimize the mix of business at our hotels as demand trends shifted in many cases, layering on additional group business, to bolster market share and strengthen overall portfolio performance. Through the successful navigation of changes in government-dependent demand, combined with continued strength in leisure travel, we achieved comparable hotel RevPAR of $118 for the full-year 2025, down 1.6% to the prior year.”
Liz Perkins, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Apple Hospitality REIT
“I think as we've progressed through the year, and reported on government being pulled back and related business, whether it be government-adjacent that we can identify or general BT-related to some uncertainty, we've been clear, it's hard to quantify completely.
"If you look at room nights for government on a same-store basis for the full year, they were down about 12% and negotiated was down 5% to 6% which really that trend did not start until [Department of Government Efficiency] and certainly ebbed and flowed throughout the year, ending the year down a little bit more with the government shutdown.
"So I'd say if you think about it from that perspective, and you assume a good portion of that could come back. The total of those could be about 1 point in occupancy. But some of that from a DOGE perspective may not return.
"And so that's why the team worked really, really hard to optimize the mix of business and replace some of that with group business throughout the year."
Jonathan Stanner, President and CEO, Summit Hotel Properties
"We expect full-year 2026 RevPAR to range from flat to up 3%, driven predominantly by gains in average daily rates. While our outlook for the full year is constructive, we expect the first quarter to be the most difficult of the year with RevPAR trending in line with our fourth-quarter 2025 results. January RevPAR declined approximately 3% despite a strong start to the month as Winter Storm Fern created significant disruption across our portfolio.
"We also faced difficult comparisons in the quarter as our first quarter last year benefited from incremental demand created by natural disasters in Florida and California; and Super Bowl 59 being hosted in New Orleans, where we have six hotels. February represents our most difficult comparison of the quarter as portfolio RevPAR increased over 7% last year."
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"The pressure we saw on RevPAR, particularly in the second and third quarter of the year was so much driven by the pullback in government and international inbound demand. And part of the knock-on effects of that was it forced us to remix our business. And part of that remixing was into lower-rated channels, particularly lower-rated leisure travels, more [online travel agency] exposure, more advanced-purchase exposure. We definitely tried to create a layer of group and advanced-purchase demand. I think we are successful doing that.
"I think what's given us some encouragement is while we were still down in the fourth quarter — and we expect the first quarter to still have these government-driven headwinds — we've been forced to do less remixing. And we are seeing a little bit more stability and growth in some of these other segments. And obviously, we're going to get to a point where we lap the very difficult government comparisons.
"So again, what we've tried to emphasize is that outside of those demand segments, the performance of other segments of our business has held up reasonably well. I wouldn't say we've seen any significant widening of the booking window at this point. I will say that, again, we feel like there is more and more incremental demand that's helping offset some of the falloff from the government segment in particular."
Bryan Giglia, CEO, Sunstone Hotel Investors
"As we shared with you on prior calls, performance last year in Washington, D.C., was less robust than initially anticipated and was impacted by government spending cuts, changes in policies and the government shutdown. Similarly, our results in San Diego were hampered by softer transient demand and a less constructive backdrop for international travel."
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"At the same time, our focused portfolio will experience headwinds from softer transient demand in San Diego and continued uncertainty in D.C., two of our larger markets, which will offset some growth. That said, both hotels had better-than-anticipated transient demand in January and February, which, if current trends continue, could result in a better-than-anticipated year."
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