In 2015, the Hotel News Now staff surveyed top minds in the hotel industry to make some bold predictions about the state and trends of the hotel industry in 2020. The resulting “2020 Hotel Trends Report” serves as something of a time capsule into the mindset, hopes and dreams of an industry which was about five years into a decade-long upcycle.

Now in 2020, with the virtue of hindsight, we can see that they weren’t too far off in their predictions. Robot butlers, check. Tablet-controlled features in the guestroom, check. Millennials indeed have grown their travel share. Brands have proliferated, even as the independent hotel space has grown with soft brands as an appealing option. Consolidation through mergers and acquisitions has added enormous scale, and that has had vast implications for the industry.

Considering the progress and movement of the past five years, what could the next five years bring?

This special report looks to answer that question.

In it, you’ll hear from analysts and forecasters who point their telescopes at 2025 to give their best long-term guesses; development and finance experts who apply their insights of today’s economic environment and markets around the world to a future view; and designers and operators who envision an evolution in the physical hotel space and how it interacts with guests.

Hotel News Now editors, present and past, also chime in with their far-out views and retrospectives.

Read on, HNN readers, and travel in time to the hotels of 2025.  

- The HNN Editorial Staff