Optimism is back. 2026 performance continues to beat expectations and 2027 forecasts call for positive RevPAR growth. But the hoteliers I talked to in Phoenix aren’t counting on revenue growth to save their margins.
At the 31st Lodging Conference in Phoenix earlier this month, the mood was noticeably better than a year ago. HVS called it “measured optimism.” Not only has RevPAR growth beaten expectations, but new supply remains limited, buoying the positive outlook, even as costs, expensive debt and loan maturities keep pressure on profitability.
I always appreciate that the vibe at The Lodging Conference is friendly and open. Executives are willing to talk candidly about what is and what isn’t working to run more efficient, more profitable operations. This year, most hoteliers I spoke with were laser-focused on how to bring more profitability to the bottom line and that meant taking a look at tech stacks, as well as vendor and partner relationships to make sure each one delivers. These are the main themes that I and my team heard at Lodging:
Phoenix told the third chapter of a story we’ve been tracking all year. Revenue is strong. Margins are stubborn.
At ALIS in January, HIA’s Candra Valley, RVP of Sales – West, found hoteliers focused on margin defense. “Tool fatigue” came up again and again. Hoteliers didn’t want more disconnected systems. They wanted more value from the ones they already had.
Following the Hotel Data Conference in August, Chris Hall, CRO at HIA, reported that the real challenge is flow-through. While May year-to-date room revenue was up 8.9%, a record high, according to data presented at the conference, the actual GOP margin at 40.4% could best be described as flat. Undistributed expenses—administrative, sales and marketing, maintenance and utilities—were rising faster than almost anything else.
At Lodging, one owner told me how fuel, tariffs, inflation, and labor increased the FF&E and construction costs so drastically mid-PIP that the contractor came back half-way through the project to say that he was losing too much money to complete the project. The owner had to renegotiate the PIP price with a big increase.
Others echoed the same tension. Revenue is up. Profit isn’t keeping pace.
The theme Chris kept hearing on the floor was simple: hoteliers don’t just want more from their technology vendors. They expect more.
“The question I heard more than any other in Phoenix was, ‘How can this technology help me more?’ Executives aren’t shopping for features anymore. They want to know what a system does for their margins, their teams’ time and the decisions they make every week.” —Chris Hall, CRO, HIA
That expectation mirrors the conference’s most public debate. Owners spent much of the week pressing brands to prove they’re worth the fees. The same scrutiny is now landing on technology vendors, and I think it should. A system that adds cost and another login without adding clarity is hard to defend in a year when every dollar of flow-through counts. Flashy features don’t defend margins. Results do.
Chip Fritsch, HIA’s co-founder and COO, spoke with leaders of several large management companies who are either in the middle of a full tech stack review or planning one for the year ahead.
“Several of the management company leaders I spoke with are in the middle of a full tech stack review or planning one for 2027. They’re asking how many systems they really need, which numbers they can trust and whether their data is ready for AI.” —Chip Fritsch, COO, HIA
The timing makes sense. According to the 2026 Hotel Operations Index, released at HDC:
Every disconnected system adds manual work, slows reporting and obscures the expenses squeezing margins. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you can’t measure clearly across a dozen systems that don’t agree.
The enemy of growth, efficiency and opportunity is often the status quo.
The savvy hoteliers I spoke with know that now more than ever, they need a single source of financial and operational truth, a unified data platform. For operators, this can mean a hospitality-specific ERP, but it is one system that serves as the main system of record: the one place every manager, accountant, executive or owner can go and trust the number.
With AI, this centralized data source matters even more. And while AI-readiness is becoming more urgent, so is the demand for measurable results. Some hoteliers are frustrated that the payoff of AI can’t be seen on the P&L yet.
AI is only as reliable as the data underneath it. It won’t fix numbers nobody trusts.
Quick plug – we built HIA to be that single source of truth for financial operations. HIA’s platform serves as a Data Lakehouse, a central repository for a hospitality company’s back office data packaged in a user-friendly interface.
HIA consolidates data from the systems hotels already run—PMS, POS, purchasing, payroll, banking and more—so finance, operations and ownership all work from the same number.
The results show up in the work. Lowen Hospitality cut its monthly close time by more than 30% and achieved a near real-time P&L with HIA ERP, and Platform Business Advisors saves 8-10 hours per hotel per month in HIA versus their other hotel-specific accounting system.
And, on controlling costs, such as in the PIP example, HIA’s project accounting module offers cost management control, and HIA’s new advanced budgeting and forecasting has ‘What if’ scenarios enabled to help model out the ROI, which can inform execution timing.
My good friend and HIA board member Mark Woodworth, a 40-year hospitality advisor, put it well in his 2027 outlook released just before Lodging: the mood continues to be worse than the data. While consensus forecasts call for 2.0% RevPAR growth in 2027, Mark expects something closer to 3.0%–3.5%. He also points out that revenue growth overtook expense growth this spring for the first time in years.
In my view, the hoteliers who come out ahead in 2027 will be the ones taking a good, hard look at their tech stack and vendor relationships and making plans for tomorrow. If you’re starting a tech stack review, and want to make sure you have the right data foundation for the future, these four questions are where I’d begin:
So I’ll ask you the question hoteliers kept asking in Phoenix: is your technology helping you as much as it should?
Planning a tech stack review for 2027? Let’s talk about building your single source of truth.
Charlie Fritsch is CEO and Founder of Hotel Investor Apps, Inc., makers of HIA, the ERP purpose-built for hospitality. With over 30 years of hotel brokerage and commercial real-estate and capital funding experience, Charlie created HIA with the express intent of simplifying and elevating hospitality financial management. Charlie is committed to always expanding HIA’s capabilities to further consolidate and streamline hospitality back-office functionality.
HIA, A Product Of © Hotel Investor Apps Inc.
