When I Travel, I Manufacture a Male Companion to Stay Safe
When I Travel, I Manufacture a Male Companion to Stay Safe
Punnawit Suwattananun/Shutterstock
https://www.fodors.com/news/news/why-women-feel-safer-traveling-with-a-man-even-in-2026
Yes, traveling is gendered...even in 2026.
There is a trip I have wanted to take for years, and I know exactly what it looks like.
A cabin somewhere in the English countryside, surrounded by nothing but fields, trees, and maybe sheep. I would go alone and stay for a week, or maybe longer. I would bring the books I have been meaning to read and the journals I have been meaning to fill. I would wake up without an alarm and fall asleep without a plan. I would turn my phone off, let my mind go quiet, and let the days blur into one another until I forgot what day it was.
I have thought about this trip many times. I have browsed listings, saved photos, imagined myself there, standing at the window with tea, watching the rain move across the hills.
But I will not go. Not because I cannot afford it, and not because I cannot find the time. I will not go because I am a woman, and remote means something different for a woman than it does for a man.
I have thought about bringing a girlfriend, but one girlfriend does not change the math. I have thought about bringing two girlfriends. Still, two girlfriends do not change the math either. Three women alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere does not inspire any sense of safety. The math only changes when a man enters the picture.
Only then is safety suddenly implied. The presence of a man signals something to other men: this woman is not alone in the way you can take advantage of. This woman is accompanied. This woman is claimed.
I think about this math more often than I would like to admit. I thought about it last November, in an Italian village, when a small kindness from strangers revealed itself to be something else entirely.
Can Kindness Just Be Kindness?
Last November, I embarked on a quest I called #LindaTakes5countries. For three years, I had kept a streak going: visiting at least 10 countries every year, which is no small thing on a Nigerian passport.
However, 2025 was so busy I had to pause that streak, because I had spent the better part of the year doing hard things. I wrote a book for one of the world’s most recognized tech publishers while doing an MBA and holding down a full-time job.
When I submitted my final manuscript, I felt the specific exhaustion of someone who has been sprinting for so long that they have forgotten what walking feels like. So, I decided to reward myself with movement, and my trip to Italy was part of that itinerary.
I went from Lagos to London to Edinburgh to Interlaken, Switzerland. A friend flew in to meet me in Switzerland, and we decided to take a train to Lake Como. By the time we arrived, it was after dark. Varenna was invisible except for dim lights and the outline of steep hills. There was no Uber, no taxi service to speak of, and our Airbnb was a fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop, which would have been fine if Italian villages were flat. They are not. They are staircases and cobblestones and hills that punish luggage wheels.
We dragged our bags up the hill, stopping every few meters to catch our breath and curse the romanticization of European travel. Halfway up, we passed a group of local men, young, maybe early twenties. They were smoking and talking, doing the kind of nothing that young men do in villages when the evening is cool, and there is nowhere else to be.
We asked for directions. They gave them, and then they offered more. They would carry our bags and walk us to our Airbnb. I cannot describe the relief of that moment without sounding dramatic. We had been traveling for 13 hours. We were exhausted. Our arms were aching, our patience was thin, and here were strangers offering help. I was overjoyed.
They carried our luggage up the rest of the hill and waited while we fumbled with the lockbox. I initially thought about tipping them, but I worried it might come off as insulting, as cultures differ, and we did not share enough language to explain our gratitude with words. So, I invited them in for dinner. They accepted, and it was a lovely evening, full of hand gestures, phrases typed into Google Translate, and laughter that did not require translation.
I remember the warmth I felt. I remember going to tweet something about how travel restores your faith in strangers, and how good people can be. Then, a day later, two of them messaged us. They wanted to take us to a nightclub before we left, so we could all have fun together. This, they suggested, was now the condition for helping with our luggage on departure day.
The phrase “have fun” meant exactly what you think it means.
I sat with my phone for a while after reading the message. I was not angry so much as tired. Not train-tired. Pattern-tired. Tired in the way women get when something familiar happens again.
I thought: Can men, as a group, be unoriginal for once? Can kindness just be kindness? Can there be no second act where the invoice arrives?
We carried our own luggage to the bus stop on departure day. The stairs were just as steep going down as they had been going up. But that was fine. Better that than owing something we never agreed to pay.
The Hidden Math of Traveling While Female
I left Varenna with a reminder that I am never just a traveler. I am a woman traveling, which is a different thing entirely. It means I am always being assessed, always being calculated, always being sorted into categories: alone or accompanied, available or claimed, safe to approach or not. And so much of that categorization comes down to whether I have a man by my side.
When I travel, I manufacture a man. I wear a fake wedding band. I tell strangers that my husband decided to stay back for some meetings while I went ahead to explore. I have said this sentence so many times that it comes out smoothly now, with the right amount of casualness, like I am not lying at all.
I am single. I do not have a husband. But I have learned that an imaginary husband offers more protection than my own two hands, my own loud voice, my own ability to say no. Every woman who travels alone knows this.
We learn that to feel safe (not actually be safe), we have to manufacture a man and run a lot of arithmetic calculations. We learn which streets to walk and which hours to walk them. We learn which train car to sit in and which seat on the bus to choose. We learn which hostels to book, which floors to opt for a room, and which come with locks. We learn which lies to tell and how to tell them convincingly.
We do these calculations while also trying to enjoy the view. And after enough years, we stop noticing that we are doing them at all. Men move through the world differently. I do not say this with bitterness. It is simply an observation.
A man can book the remote cabin in the countryside I have always wanted to stay in, and the main question he asks is whether he will enjoy the solitude. A woman asks a different question first. She asks whether the solitude is safe.
I have declined trips, turned down invitations, and stayed home when every part of me wanted to go. Not because I lacked money, time, or desire, but because the math did not work.
The cabin in the English countryside is still saved in my bookmarks. I look at it sometimes, the way you look at a place you know you will never visit. I know how this sounds. I am a woman who has built a career, written a book, and traveled to dozens of countries on a Nigerian passport. I am not someone who waits for permission or needs a protector.
And yet here I am, telling you that I will not book a cabin alone in the English countryside. I need a man to make me feel safe from the possibility of encountering unsafe men.
I resent this. I resent that it is true. But resentment does not change the math, and awareness of and adherence to math are what keep women alive.
So, the cabin stays in my bookmarks. I will look at it again next month and the month after that. I will keep imagining myself there, standing at the window with tea, watching the rain move across the hills.
Until I have a man to go with.
U.S. hotels post strong Q1 performance: report
https://hotelsmag.com/news/u-s-hotels-post-strong-q1-performance-report/?
HotelData.com released its Q1 2026 Hotel Profitability Performance Report, showing U.S. hotels entered the year with improved occupancy, stronger demand, and healthier profit margins compared to Q1 2025, while operators forecast a more cautious revenue environment for the remainder of the year. The report draws on aggregated data from thousands of U.S. hotels using Actabl’s operational and financial platforms.
At the all-hotels level, average daily rate rose 6.0% year over year to $202.63, RevPAR increased 8.7% to $129.46, and TrevPAR climbed 9.4% to $174.83. Occupancy gained 1.5 percentage points to 64.3%. Gross operating profit margin rose four percentage points, from 37.8% to 41.8%.
Luxury hotels led Q1 performance, posting the strongest TrevPAR growth and largest GOP margin improvement across chain scales. Economy hotels recorded declines in ADR, RevPAR and TrevPAR, though GOP margin improved through tighter cost controls. Independent hotels saw slight margin compression despite modest TrevPAR growth.
“Q1 showed that demand is still there, but profitability is increasingly coming down to how effectively hotels convert that demand into revenue,” said Sarah McCay Tams, head of research and editorial of Actabl. “Hotels are not necessarily struggling to fill rooms. The bigger challenge is generating the level of guest spend and profitability that many operators originally planned for. The quarter reinforced how uneven the market has become, with some segments like luxury continuing to outperform while others face softer pricing and revenue pressure. Hotels that manage pricing, ancillary revenue, and operational costs together will likely be in a stronger position through the rest of 2026.”
For Q2 through Q4, operators forecast ADR to rise 1.6% against 2025 actuals, while RevPAR is forecast to decline 1.3% and TrevPAR to fall 2.6%. Occupancy is expected to remain relatively stable, pointing to softer pricing power rather than a demand shortfall as the primary pressure point heading into the second half of 2026.
Driftwood Capital targets key Caribbean, Latin American markets for strategic luxury growth
Company prioritizes adaptive reuse, repositioning projects
Driftwood Capital renovated the 245-key Hotel Rumbao, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, ahead of the opening of its new 10,500-square-foot casino called the Gran Casino Viejo San Juan. (Driftwood)
https://www.costar.com/article/2031385353/driftwood-capital-targets-key-caribbean-latin-american-markets-for-strategic-luxury-growth
By Bryan Wroten
CORAL GABLES, Florida — A year since launching its Lifestyle & Luxury platform, Driftwood Capital is adding, expanding, and breaking ground on new additions to its total portfolio.
Luxury hotels and hotels in different regions are also part of the plan, said Alinio Azevedo, managing director of luxury and lifestyle, in an interview at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit Caribbean and Latin America conference.
In recent months, the hospitality-focused real estate investment firm topped off its 500-room Westin Cocoa Beach project and opened a casino at its Hotel Rumbao Tribute Portfolio in Old San Juan in Puerto Rico. It also broke ground on a new development in Miami called the Riverside Wharf mixed-use project. In April, Gregory Maliassas joined the company from Playa Hotels & Resorts as CEO of its management arm, Driftwood Hospitality Management.
Azevedo and his team have been deliberate about growth — in class and in geography — in the year since Driftwood started the Lifestyle & Luxury platform. They've yet to add a true luxury hotel to the portfolio, but he said the team sees a massive opportunity for them, since the luxury hotel segment has been over-performing, as the cohort of wealthy people who choose luxury hotel stays has grown as well.
“The idea is to create a group that allows us to invest in the upper end of the market and build and/or acquire, reposition hotels that could be positioned as lifestyle,” he said.
Alinio Azevedo (Driftwood Capital)
As part of this, Driftwood is looking at international expansion, scouting out markets outside the U.S. that fit best with the company’s vision, he said. There are a select few in the CALA region, specifically Mexico, Costa Rica — where it already has one hotel — and the Dominican Republic. It’s also looking at expanding in Puerto Rico, and Spain and Portugal are possibilities down the road.
“We're doing this slowly, and we're doing this methodically and trying to find really the right deal,” he said.
Every country is different, and while at the macro level conditions may be similar, the cost of capital will vary depending on the market, he said. In some countries, borrowers can get local debt financing because the industry is more mature and the financial markets trust hospitality companies. In other countries, there’s less trust.
“Therefore, that has an impact on the value, so there’s no one-size-fits-all,” he said.
Generally speaking, hotel investment is capital-intensive, and capital is expensive across the world, he said. Interest rates have gone up, and geopolitical concerns and inflation expectations play into this as well.
Driftwood spends a lot of time defining target markets because the macro market environment has significant influence on the outcome of its investments, Azevedo said. Finding the right market and the right deal in that market is the first threshold to cross to do a deal. Beyond that, it’s about finding the right balance between development deals and acquisitions and repositioning projects.
Historically, Driftwood has grown through a lot of adaptive reuse or enhanced value-add renovations, he said. It buys underperforming hotels, invests capital into them, changes the brand and management and then scales and stabilizes the property.
CoStar data shows Driftwood Capital owns 36 hotels operating or under development. The majority are branded properties, mostly a mix of Marriott International and Hilton flags. Since 2015, the company and its affiliates have transacted on over $5 billion in hospitality properties.
When filtering everything that comes through that, the first layer is markets and locations within the market, he said. After that, it’s looking at whether it’s an adaptive reuse project or development project that won’t be too long of a development cycle.
As for how many opportunities make it from the top of the funnel to acquisition, he said “probably less than 5%. We see a lot of things on a daily basis.”
There hasn’t been a lot of true distress in the market as seen after the Great Financial Crisis, Azevedo said. There are opportunities to acquire properties below replacement costs, but they aren’t necessarily in large degrees of distress. There are a lot of expectations over when interest rates will come down again, and the timing of that will be important to see whether distressed transactions actually unlock.
There's still a gap between sellers’ expectations and buyers’ willingness to buy, he said.
“We've seen sellers take assets to market, the market comes back with a much lower valuation than they were willing to take, and then they just keep the asset,” he said. “Well, for how much longer can they keep the asset?”
There’s a carrying cost of a hotel from capital expenditures, he said. Some owners will defer the renovations because they’re not long-term holders.
“We don't have a crystal ball, but what we are doing is making sure that we're prepared internally with capabilities, with the right strategy to be able to execute on those deals once they start to happen,” he said.
World Cup set to be a game of rate, not occupancy, for hotels
Philadelphia, Dallas, and New York City are expected to outperform other host cities
Philadelphia is one of the host markets of this summer's 2026 FIFA World Cup. (Getty Images)
https://www.costar.com/article/882251618/world-cup-set-to-be-a-game-of-rate-not-occupancy-for-hotels?
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is now mere weeks away. It's almost time to block out all of the noise and let the play on the pitch — or performance at hotels — do the talking.
On the latest CoStar News Hotels podcast, Didio Pequeno, director of hospitality market analytics, Northeast and Midwestern U.S. for CoStar Group, said opinions from hoteliers vary, but he believes the overall impact of the World Cup will stray away from hyperbole.
"Once the World Cup was announced in the U.S., it was kind of like everyone thought, as we said, like the World Cup was going to be 104 Super Bowls. Those are always very lofty expectations," he said. "Now the sentiment has ... gone a little bit pessimistic, and we're hearing people say that the World Cup is going to underwhelm. Of course, I think actual performance is going to meet somewhere in the middle."
A lot of the discussion surrounding hotel performance for the tournament has focused on occupancy projected to come in lower than numbers from last year in some of the host markets, Pequeno said. But that ignores the stark increases in average daily rate, which should make up for — and partially explain — the dips in occupancy.
"When I talk to people, whether that be general managers or revenue managers around the country, I'm getting a lot of mixed signals, but I think the prevailing thought is that yes, the World Cup will still boost performance through the summer," he said. "Performance is going to vary market by market; some will perform better than others, of course, but it's not really about demand, it's more so about markets being able to drive rate."
Among the hotel markets projected to perform well are Philadelphia, Vancouver, Dallas, and New York City, he said.
One of the prevailing camps of thought in the hospitality industry is that hotel performance may underwhelm throughout the group stage of the tournament but shine in the knockout stage. Of the 104 total World Cup matches, 32 of those will be in the elimination rounds, which begin on June 28.
Analyzing the split between the group and knockout rounds is "the right idea," Pequeno said.
"As we get into the knockout stages ... when you think about those larger teams like Spain, Argentina, England, France that have these massive fan bases, if they advance into the knockout stages and really go far, then we're going to see a lot of travelers spending more money on hotels and travel, and that will benefit World Cup performance and hotel performance in general," he said.
To hear more from CoStar Group's Didio Pequeno, listen to the podcast embedded above.
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