Off the Cuff with Bashar

2/26/26 - A special edition of our anti-newsletter featuring Bashar Wali, CEO & Founder of This Assembly

If you’ve been following along, then you know that Off the Cuff is an opportunity every week to engage with the ILCommunity. It’s where we talk about upcoming events, perks, current happenings, and everything in between.

NOW we’re turning it up a notch. At the end of each month, we’re having an off-the-cuff conversation with an indie hotel owner, operator, or developer about their life, work, and where they see the industry heading.

We’ve asked our board member and founder and CEO of This Assembly, Bashar Wali, to take the reins this week. If you haven’t read our inaugural feature with Andrew Benioff, check it out here.

So, without further ado, Bashar: take it away!

In an ever-changing landscape, it’s challenging to stay current with trends and even more difficult to discern which ones are truly effective ideas. Bashar dissects what happened in 2025 in hospitality and what to look for in 2026.

RevPAR played nice in 2025. Profit did not.

What is RevPar?

As defined by Investopedia,“RevPAR, or Revenue Per Available Room, serves as a key performance indicator in the hospitality sector. By calculating RevPAR, hotel operators can assess their ability to fill rooms at average rates, helping them make pricing and occupancy decisions. Understanding RevPAR’s nuances allows hoteliers to compare against industry standards and make informed decisions to optimize revenue.”

Owners called it stable. Operators felt the squeeze every morning, somewhere between payroll and the third angry call about Wi-Fi. Costs climbed, guests pushed back on the rate, and the P&L (profit and loss) quietly started eating itself. You can hold revenue and still lose the year. Plenty of hotels did.

That’s the setup for 2026. Not a crash. Not a boom. A test. The kind that exposes sloppy operators, lazy vendors, and anyone who confuses a dashboard with a plan.

So what should we look for in 2026?

Most 2026 outlooks land in the same neighborhood: modest RevPAR growth driven by ADR, occupancy flat to slightly down.

Forecast shops argue over decimals, not direction.

• STR and Tourism Economics peg 2026 at 62.0% occupancy, ADR up 0.9%, RevPAR up 0.5%.

• PwC sits close at 62.2% occupancy, ADR up 1.1%, RevPAR up 0.9%.

• LARC runs slightly punchier on rate, 61.6% occupancy, ADR up 2.1%, RevPAR up 1.2%.

Hotels fail because teams run the business like it’s still 2019, or like a brand standard can refinance a loan.

2025 taught the same lesson, just louder. Occupancy stayed below 2019 levels in a lot of markets. ADR growth slowed as consumers developed a spine. Payroll, benefits, insurance, utilities, and property taxes refused to cooperate. Meanwhile, maturities crept closer, and refinancing started acting like an adult, picky, judgmental, and expensive.

So yes, revenue is held in many places. Margins still compressed. The top line can distract you. Net operating income never lies.

Indie professionals eat, sleep, and breathe work ethic and hospitality. What are the things to look out for in 2026?

1. Spikes: FIFA 2026 runs June 11 through July 19. Host markets include Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle. Those cities will see short stretches of extreme demand, the kind that tempts people to believe the whole year changed.Model those weeks like spikes, because they are spikes. Price them with precision. Protect rate integrity outside peak periods.

2. International travel: Visitation keeps trailing 2019, and 2026 won’t magically remove friction. Canada’s softness hits certain regions harder than others. International demand shows up when you remove confusion and make arrival feel easy. Win the first five minutes, airport-to-hotel flow, language readiness, mobile-first pre-arrival comms, transparent total price, fast check-in. Lose those, and you lose conversion, length of stay, and the chance to build loyalty that actually matters.

3. Short-term rentals: They’re the neighbor that never moves out. STR sits inside the baseline now. Hotels still win on reliability, security, and service. STR wins on the stuff groups and longer stays value, multiple bedrooms, flexible layouts, kitchens, laundry, and perceived value. Hotels don’t claw back with “refreshes.” Hotels claw it back with product and packaging, frictionless multi-room booking, clear total price value, and other ways where ROI makes sense.

4. Designers and manufacturers: Not because guests crave more “moments,” but because guests punish broken basics like bathrooms, soft goods, and tech that actually works. You can sell beauty all day. You still need the room to function like it respects human life.

   Financing and construction economics keep ground-up development constrained, but supply still enters through conversions and reopenings. Track every bed, not just flagged hotels. Hotels, STR, conversions, all of it. Your comp set spreadsheet doesn’t show you the real threat when you only watch the brands you recognize.

5. Labor: It remains the margin killer nobody wants to talk about honestly. Hotels compete with industries that offer steadier schedules and less emotional labor. Participation rates still lag pre-pandemic levels. Regulation adds weight in the markets that already cost the most to run. New York City’s Safe Hotels Act introduces licensing requirements and limits on contracted labor at larger hotels, which matters a lot for non-union full-service assets. Los Angeles adopted wage step-ups tied to the 2028 Olympics, which pushes labor cost trajectories up now, not later.

   Most hotels don’t lose labor to wage gaps. They lose labor to dysfunction. Bad scheduling. Vague roles. Weak supervisors. Chaos masquerading as culture. Train managers like profit depends on them, because profit does.

6. Capital markets: Capital Markets offer fewer panic headlines and more consequences. Borrowing costs eased from peak stress, but debt still costs real money. Lenders show less patience for underperforming assets. Brands demand more. Owners face bigger CapEx burdens. Deferred maintenance collides with maturities. That collision drives restructurings, note sales, deed-in-lieu outcomes, foreclosures, recapitalizations, cash-in refis, and structured deals with real dilution. Time becomes the constraint for any asset with deferred CapEx and near-term maturity exposure. Meet the maturity wall early, or it meets you at speed.

So what should owners, operators, and the people who sell to them do with all this information?

Treat 2026 like a year that rewards execution, not enthusiasm. Build your plan around the base case, then run downside scenarios like you mean it. Protect liquidity. Price spikes like a surgeon, not a gambler. Pursue a group with intent, because a group stabilizes when the transient softens. Fix distribution leakage, because net ADR decides your future. Fund CapEx that protects demand, because guests tolerate small rooms, they don’t tolerate broken basics. Operate labor as a craft, not a crisis response.

And for the tech companies, designers, and manufacturers reading this with a hopeful grin, bring owners solutions that reduce friction, improve reliability, and show ROI fast. If your product adds complexity, you just became an expense.

Here’s the truth in one line.

2026 will not save your asset. You will.

Longing for Belonging,

- Bashar Wali, This Assembly

Thanks for reading! Let’s keep the conversation going. See you in April for INDIECultivate in Boston.