findaccommodation.org Miniblog

The Hotel Industry Is Expanding Into Markets Where CRM Data Means Almost Nothing

Hotel groups love CRM because CRM loves certainty. It adores a warm lead, a familiar account, a client who has already announced themselves by clicking, enquiring or rebooking. Very tidy. Very flattering. And increasingly less useful.

Travel growth is drifting towards places where the data arrives late, incomplete, or not at all. In 2025, travel and tourism grew 4.1% globally, ahead of world economic growth at 2.8%. But the interesting part is where. Asia-Pacific rose 8.1% to US$3.29 trillion, while North America managed just 1.0%, with the US limping along at 0.9%. By 2035, the sector is expected to exceed US$16 trillion, and around 150 million more households are likely to start travelling within five years, largely from emerging-market middle classes.

That creates an awkward problem for hotel sales teams built to collect demand rather than spark it. In mature markets, systems point to ripe opportunities and people congratulate themselves for picking them. Move those same teams into newer markets with scant history, fewer inbound leads and patchy reporting, and many simply stop. No signals, no movement.

The answer is less glamorous than software demos suggest. Hire people with judgement, not merely CRM neatness. Focus on named accounts, not invented segments. Treat weekly pipeline calls as intelligence exchanges. In these markets, the best salespeople do not read demand. They notice it forming.

Posted on 31 July 2026

The All-Inclusive That Pays You To Leave The Resort

Most all-inclusives want to keep you penned in, shuffling between buffet trays and a swim-up bar like a contented lab rat. Then Curaçao goes and does something refreshingly sane: one resort will actually pay you to get out.

Sandals Royal Curaçao, on the 3,000-acre Santa Barbara estate, gives qualifying guests a US$250 dining credit to use in Willemstad, plus return transfers. That means your “all-inclusive” can include dinner beyond the gates at six city restaurants, from Latin-Caribbean small plates and rum drinks at Mosa/Caña to seafood at Sal the Kitchen, where even the walls are made of coral. It’s called the Island Inclusive Dining programme, and it neatly sidesteps the stale resort trick of pretending the world ends at reception.

That matters because the resort itself already has enough to keep most people planted: eight restaurants, three food trucks, 13 bars, a two-level infinity pool, and bay views over Spanish Water. Adults-only, too, so no cannonball diplomacy at breakfast.

Elsewhere, food-led all-inclusives are getting smarter. Fairmont Mayakoba in Mexico lets guests opt into a package covering eight restaurants and five bars; Secrets Papagayo in Costa Rica builds its menus around local dishes and drinks; Castle Hot Springs in Arizona grows much of what it serves on site. But Curaçao’s approach stands out. It understands a holiday should include the place you flew to see.
Posted on 25 July 2026

The Burj Al Arab Shutdown Says More Than Any Tourism Campaign

A city may erect a palace upon the sea, gild every hallway and perfume every lobby, yet a single week of missiles will prove more instructive than a decade of glossy brochures. Dubai and Abu Dhabi long traded on a simple promise: whatever storms troubled the region, comfort and order would still be laid on here with chilled towels and a view.

That promise has taken a bruising. Before the conflict, Dubai’s hotels were running at about 80 per cent occupancy. Moody’s Analytics then projected a slump to roughly 10 per cent in the second quarter. Airports and ports were disrupted, visitors left, and empty rooms began speaking louder than any advertising campaign.

The Burj Al Arab’s 18-month closure for refurbishment is presented as routine improvement. Perhaps so. Yet timing has its own eloquence. The St. Regis Dubai, The Palm, has also shut its hotel accommodation for renovation, removing more high-end capacity just as demand has fallen through the floor.

The injury runs beyond hotels. Some restaurants have cut menus or closed for a spell as imports of specialist ingredients became pricier and less reliable. Luxury retail has suffered as well, with one major Dubai shopping centre reporting sales down by 30 to 50 per cent in March.

Officials have offered discounts and help for stranded travellers. Sensible measures. But intercepted missiles and damaged airports are stubborn critics. The Gulf’s great luxury pitch was immunity. That illusion, not merely occupancy, has been the true casualty.

Posted on 15 July 2026

Repeat Guests Are More Valuable Than New Ones-Here's The Hidden Reason

Hotels have spent years obsessing over the wrong question. Not “Who might visit?” but “Who keeps returning?” That sounds like a small distinction. It isn’t.

After three decades in hotel development and operations, Gary Brandels argues that repeat visitation is the stronger signal. He’s right. A first-time guest is interest. A returning guest is behaviour. Behaviour matters more.

Think about university towns. Demand doesn’t depend on being fashionable or newly discovered. It comes from alumni weekends, graduations, football fixtures, student move-ins, parent visits, campus tours, faculty travel, research activity and corporate partnerships. That isn’t random traffic. It’s a cycle. Medical districts work similarly. So do government centres and places with a strong local identity.

The hidden reason repeat guests matter more is simple: they are less sold on the destination and more focused on the hotel. They already have a reason to come back. Now they choose where to stay. Familiarity, trust and consistency start to outweigh novelty.

That changes what a hotel is. It stops being spare inventory and becomes part of the ritual. The place for family reunions, reunion weekends, milestone trips and business relationships.

Occupancy, ADR, RevPAR and booking pace still matter. But smarter operators should also track return frequency, recurring events, institutional anchors and local partnerships. The future may belong less to places people discover once, and more to places they never quite leave behind.

Posted on 10 July 2026

The Cheapest Hotel Night Isn’t the One Most Travelers Pick

Hotel prices behave like a rigged heartbeat: jumpy, opportunistic, never sentimental. The trick is knowing which pulse to catch.

Recent data from Expedia, Kayak, and Hopper points to a split most travelers miss: the cheapest day to book is not the same as the cheapest day to arrive. For U.S. hotel stays, Monday tends to be the lowest-cost booking day. For international trips, Tuesday usually wins. On the check-in side, Sunday is often the cheaper domestic arrival day, while Tuesday commonly comes in lower for international stays. Friday, meanwhile, regularly lands as the priciest domestic check-in day.

Why? Rates mutate under dynamic pricing, then get squeezed harder when business travel collides with weekend leisure demand or when local events flood a market.

The calendar can also lie. Booking within the same week can sometimes beat prices locked in a month earlier. Last-minute discounts do appear, though usually with fewer rooms left to choose from. Refundable reservations create an escape hatch: if the rate drops later, travelers can rebook.

Timing still matters for predictable demand spikes. Hopper recommends booking one to three months ahead for major events. Kayak flags November and January as strong value months. Price alerts remain one of the cleaner ways to watch the machine twitch before it bites.

Posted on 4 July 2026

When Heat Becomes the Reason to Check In

Britain’s heatwave has turned the hotel room into a kind of modern refuge: less luxury than necessity, especially for families with newborns trying to cool homes built to hold warmth, not release it.

Since 1 June, Booking.com says the share of searches in Great Britain using the air-conditioning filter has tripled, tracking the latest burst of extreme heat across northern Europe. Adyen’s transaction data shows UK hotel revenue in Great Britain jumped 34% between 22 and 25 June compared with the same dates in 2025.

The weather explains the rush. Temperatures pushed into the mid and high 30Cs in parts of England and Wales, the Met Office issued extreme heat warnings, and on Friday the UK provisionally logged a new June record: 36.9C at Wattisham, Suffolk.

Hotels are feeling the pressure. Heartwood Inns, which runs pubs with rooms across the UK, said occupancy reached 86% this week, with many properties full or nearly so. About a third of callers now ask first about air conditioning. Among them are parents of newborn babies unable to keep bedrooms cool enough for sleep.

Templeton Garden in London said it was at capacity as guests sought cooled interiors, shaded terraces and its private garden. At The Feathers in Woodstock, occupancy rose from 74% to 81%, with air-conditioned rooms drawing last-minute bookings, nearby couples making short escapes, and one-night stays often stretching longer.

Posted on 1 July 2026

Canada’s Hotels Enjoy Their Briskest Advance Since 2024

One might observe, without any impropriety, that Canada’s hotels have entered May 2026 in a decidedly prosperous humour. New figures from CoStar show the country achieving its strongest year-on-year advances in both average daily rate and revenue per available room since 2024.

Occupancy reached 70.7%, a modest rise of 0.9% from May 2025. Yet it was in pricing that the industry displayed its greatest confidence: ADR climbed 9.5% to CAD233.40, the sharpest monthly increase since November 2024, while RevPAR improved 10.5% to CAD165.02, the best such gain since December 2024.

Quebec distinguished itself above every other province and territory. Its occupancy rose 5.9% to 72.1%, ADR advanced 20.0% to CAD276.62, and RevPAR leapt 27.1% to CAD199.49.

Montreal, with even greater spirit, led the major markets. Occupancy there increased 8.1% to 78.0%; ADR surged 26.7% to CAD313.08; and RevPAR rose 36.9% to CAD244.09. These unusual elevations were assisted by the Canadian Grand Prix, held in May rather than June this year.

June has already shown event-driven pricing in World Cup host cities. On 12 June, Toronto recorded ADR growth of 47.6% and RevPAR growth of 36.2%. On 13 June, Vancouver posted ADR up 54.0% and RevPAR up 30.4%. Still, by 15 June, bookings for Vancouver’s 24 June match stood at 64%, down 8.6% year over year; downtown occupancy on the books was 66.3%, down 14.3%. Posted on 28 June 2026

Hilton Debuts First Cave Hotel in Cappadocia

Hilton has added an unusual new address in Türkiye: Elika Cave Suites Cappadocia, Curio Collection by Hilton, the company’s first hotel built around cave accommodations.

Set in Ortahisar, within Cappadocia’s UNESCO World Heritage-listed landscape, the property turns restored cave dwellings into 36 rooms and suites. It lands as part of Hilton’s wider push in Türkiye, where lifestyle hotels now make up one in five properties in its development pipeline. The company currently has 14 lifestyle hotels open or in the pipeline across the country.

This one leans hard into place, which is exactly what Cappadocia demands. The design draws from the region’s cave architecture and local character rather than flattening it into generic luxury. Some suites come with the kind of extras that make hotel people lose their minds a little: private pools, Turkish hammams, fireplaces and hot tubs.

The amenity list also includes a cave spa, an outdoor swimming pool, wellness facilities and meeting rooms. Dining is handled by Colastre, whose menu is shaped by Cappadocian and broader Anatolian influences.

For Hilton, the opening is less about novelty for novelty’s sake and more about using a global brand to package a destination-specific stay. In a region already famous for surreal geology and carved-stone living, the hotel’s appeal is that it doesn’t try to compete with the setting. It moves into it.

Posted on 16 June 2026

Cuba Turns to Its Own as Foreign Hotel Chains Pull Back

Cuba is preparing to hand more hotel management to Cubans on the island and overseas, after several foreign operators began trimming their presence in a tourist industry already running on fumes.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel said the state is considering new business formats in which Cuban managers, including émigré investors, would take over properties previously run through partnerships with foreign firms.

The shift follows Meliá’s May 26 decision to stop operating 15 of the 34 Cuban hotels in its portfolio. The Spanish chain moved after the United States widened sanctions and maintained an energy embargo that Havana says has worsened blackouts, water shortages, supply failures, strain in healthcare and the broader grind of daily life.

Other hotel groups, including Canada-owned Royalton and Spain’s Iberostar, have also reduced or suspended activity, deepening the blow to a sector that has been sliding since its high point in 2019.

Washington’s latest measures targeted GAESA, the military-run conglomerate behind businesses ranging from car rentals and retail to transport. Through its subsidiary Gaviota, GAESA is Meliá’s hotel partner. The measures also freeze assets of other foreign companies, seize U.S.-based accounts, and bar travel by shareholders, investors and employees, effectively shutting them out of the U.S. financial system.

Meliá had been managing roughly 14,000 rooms. Tourism numbers are now grim: 298,000 visitors arrived from January through March, down from 573,300 a year earlier, a 48% drop. Posted on 8 June 2026

Beach House or Money Pit? Retirement Meets the Tide

Brian and Sally, both 63, have $1.6 million in investments and a $1.1 million beach house that used to bring in $2,000 a week for roughly 10 to 12 summer weeks. Then came a zoning change and, like a seagull nicking your chips, away went the short-term rental income that helped prop up their retirement plan.

Now the beach house has stopped being just a dream and started acting like a maths problem.

A year-round tenant could provide steadier income, lower turnover costs and less faff with supplies and marketing. There may also be future flexibility: if the property is held as a long-term rental, a 1031 exchange could later defer tax by moving proceeds into another real estate investment.

But there’s the rub. Long-term letting means more wear and tear, less personal use, management costs, insurance, compliance rules and possibly less income than the $20,000 to $24,000 they used to make in peak season. And coastal homes carry extra hazards: floods, hurricanes, rising taxes and sharply higher insurance costs, with premiums rising just 3% nationally between 2019 and 2024 but 25% or more in southern coastal areas, according to the GAO.

Selling would simplify things, but because it isn’t a primary residence, capital gains tax and depreciation recapture could bite.

So the real question is simple: is this house an investment, or an expensive postcard? Posted on 3 June 2026

APA Takes Its Tiny-Room Playbook to North America

APA Hotels built a fortune by doing something very Japanese and very savage: making rooms so small you can practically moisturize in bed, then distracting you with enough polish and perks to feel like you’re winning. Now that formula is leaving home.

The Tokyo-based APA Group, founded 50 years ago by Toshio Motoya and Fumiko Motoya, is expanding in North America under CEO Isshi Motoya, their 55-year-old son and the family heir. The plan is not just to plant flags overseas, but to make international operations a bigger slice of revenue and move further into higher-end lodging. Part of that growth is expected to come through acquisitions.

That shift matters because APA’s domestic backdrop is complicated. Japan is packed with inbound visitors right now, helped by a weak yen that has made the country feel like a luxury outlet mall for tourists. But the longer-term math at home is harsher: demographic decline limits how much a hotel empire can rely on Japan alone.

So APA is trying to export the thing that made it famous: compact rooms, tight operational discipline and a brand identity loud enough to announce itself before you even hit the elevator. It’s a new chapter for a chain long defined by efficiency, now aiming to prove that small-room economics can travel upscale and cross borders too.

Posted on 1 June 2026

Why Hotels Are Winning in 2026: Luxury, Wellness, Tech, and the Return of Soul

Hotels in 2026 resemble a species that has discovered both yoga and algorithms. Global revenue hit $870 billion in 2025 and is expected to top $940 billion in 2026, but the winnings are flowing mainly to six tribes.

Luxury is sprinting ahead: a $154 billion market in 2024, heading toward $369 billion by 2032, helped by affluent travelers who remain stubbornly bookable. In 2026, 58% of travelers are choosing Superior or luxury rooms, up four points from 2025. Ritz-Carlton, Park Hyatt, and Six Senses are obvious beneficiaries.

Lifestyle and boutique hotels win by turning a stay into a self-portrait: W, Andaz, Thompson, Moxy, and Motto all trade in design, local identity, and lobbies that mutate from workspace to soirée.

Wellness now governs architecture as much as massages. Preferred Hotels & Resorts flags cognitive wellness as a defining 2026 trend. Hilton found 90% of guests try to maintain fitness goals while traveling; hence Peloton content in rooms. Six Senses, EVEN, and 1 Hotel lead.

Extended-stay brands such as Residence Inn, Hyatt House, Home2 Suites, and Candlewood Suites profit from hybrid work. Tech leaders—Hilton, IHG, Marriott Bonvoy, Aloft—have made digital keys, AI pricing, mobile service, AR, VR, and robots feel oddly normal.

Adaptive reuse adds the soul: Serras Sevilla, Romègas Hotel, Palais Jamaï Fès, and Autograph Collection prove old walls still outperform bland new ones.

Marriott dominates scale, Hilton tech, Hyatt curation, IHG wellness and loyalty, Accor sustainability. The common formula: personalization, wellness, authenticity, experience, and measurable ESG. Posted on 30 May 2026

Hotels Brace for the World Cup With Hope, Nerves and Room Rates

The World Cup arrives June 11 to July 19 with 104 matches across 16 North American cities, ending at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and U.S. hotels are reacting the way one does to a grand promise from football: with excitement, spreadsheets and mild nausea.

Forecasts have softened. A May AHLA report said bookings are running below early expectations, after FIFA canceled thousands of room nights in March, leaving hotels to refill inventory and rethink sales plans. Even so, CoStar still expects host-city RevPAR to rise about 12.7% to 13% year over year in June and July, driven more by ADR than occupancy; the broader U.S. effect is just 1.7%.

Tourism Economics projects 1.24 million international visitors. If they come, they matter: the U.S. Travel Association says they spend 1.7 times more than typical overseas travelers. But visa friction, affordability worries and confusion about U.S. entry procedures may curb demand.

Dallas, with nine matches at AT&T Stadium, is planning for something closer to nine major Cowboys home games than a miracle, with expected RevPAR gains of 5% to 20%. New York’s outlook is steadier: CoStar sees RevPAR up roughly 16%, with ADR up 14%, and one operator reports occupancy up 8% from June 9 to July 21.

Expedia data suggests overflow demand may be the real drama: Kansas City travel intent is up 135%, Monterrey lodging demand 255%, Fort Worth demand five times Dallas, and Bay Area spillover intent 670%. Hotels are being urged not to overprice, impose blackout dates, or ignore food-and-beverage opportunities.

Posted on 29 May 2026

When Wooden Details Make a Hotel Feel Human

Travel has a sly little habit of exposing what we actually value. We set off for novelty, but the things that calm us are often absurdly modest: the feel of a surface, the weight of an object, the small routines that suggest one may safely exhale.

That is where wooden hotel amenities earn their keep. A room feels less transitory when its details have texture and warmth rather than the sterile cheerlessness of plastic. A wooden Do Not Disturb hanger, for instance, does more than dangle on a handle; it marks out privacy with a certain quiet assurance. In shared spaces, wooden table signs can steer guests toward a lobby or open-air restaurant without the brisk, institutional air synthetic signage tends to radiate.

The effect continues in smaller gestures. On a terrace washed with afternoon light, a guest may jot notes with a wooden pencil, place a cup on a wooden coaster, and leave a wooden hotel key card nearby. None of this is grand. That is precisely the point.

Hotels do not create a home away from home by copying domestic life item for item. They do it by supplying enough tactile familiarity that the stay begins to feel inhabited rather than merely occupied. Natural materials help turn temporary space into somewhere one can properly settle. Posted on 28 May 2026

Why Hotel Owners So Often Learn Too Late

Hotel owners often discover underperformance the way people discover a leak in the ceiling: long after the water has formed its own government. In hospitality, the culprit is frequently not the market but a built-in information imbalance between owner and operator.

Juan Sánchez-Harguindey, a hospitality finance consultant with 25 years in the sector, argues that chains and management companies are answerable first to their own boards and systems. Once a contract is signed, the operator controls the data while the owner largely supplies capital. Standard monthly reports may meet contractual requirements, yet still fail to expose why returns are weakening. Labour costs can drift, revenue softness can be waved off as market conditions, and maintenance can be postponed to flatter short-term EBITDA while quietly damaging long-term value.

That is where independent asset management comes in: not property management, not facilities oversight, but owner-side governance of operating and financial performance. In practice, that means testing management accounts, comparing results with competitors and original operator promises, scrutinising capex, checking contract compliance, and giving owners timely visibility into the asset’s condition.

Sánchez-Harguindey has done this across three continents, from single resorts to portfolios with budgets above €40 million. In distress, including insolvencies, labour strikes and court-led restructurings, the need becomes brutal and obvious. Better, though, is to spot the rot before the wallpaper starts speaking.

Posted on 26 May 2026

The Human Revenue Machine Hiding in Plain Sight

Hotels keep installing more silicon concierge jazz: mobile check-in, kiosks, AI, app-based upsells. Useful, sure. But the sleeper revenue instrument is still the person at the desk, the server with timing, the concierge with antennae.

The core insight is simple: guests often arrive in a different mental state than when they booked. Pre-arrival, they compare prices. On-property, they respond to atmosphere, fatigue, celebration, relief, aspiration. That shift makes human judgment unusually powerful. A trained employee can catch a cue—a family needing more room, a business traveler craving quiet, a couple marking an anniversary—and turn it into a better stay and a higher spend.

Digital offers remain uneven because many guests ignore emails, skip apps, or book through OTA channels without usable contact details. Some of the highest-value buying decisions happen in person.

Frontline Performance Group has built its model around that moment. Its system combines coaching, e-learning, incentives and KPI tracking. The IN-Gauge platform connects to a hotel PMS, measures incremental revenue, logs upsells in real time and shows performance through desktop and mobile leaderboards.

The numbers are concrete: a Bali hotel posted 6% RevPAR growth after a front-desk upsell program, and one Singapore front-desk agent generated more than $80,000 in upsell revenue year to date. FPG now works with 2,500-plus hotels in more than 120 countries.

AI, in this setup, works best backstage—spotting patterns, coaching gaps and revenue leakage—while people handle the feeling.
Posted on 25 May 2026

Hotels Are Now Built Twice: Once in Space, Once in Software

Hotels used to be judged by their chandeliers, their bars, their talent for making a guest feel briefly more glamorous than usual. Now they are also judged by the Wi-Fi, the payment flow, the reservation journey, the lighting controls, and whether anything digital works without making a person want to lie down.

At the HT360 Hospitality Leaders Forum, the consensus was simple: technology can no longer be bolted on after the design is finished. Paul Wells of Studio Moren argued that in an era when space is precious and public areas must constantly change roles, infrastructure has to be planned early. Ceiling heights, floor slabs, cabling, temperature control, and upgrade flexibility all affect both atmosphere and function. A lovely room with patchy Wi-Fi is, in practical terms, no longer lovely.

Alessandra Leoni of Focus on Hospitality stressed early planning because technology changes much faster than buildings do. Scot Turner of Auden Hospitality framed the test more ruthlessly: tech should remove friction for guests or staff, or improve the experience.

That matters especially in F&B. Turner highlighted the value of two-way EPOS and reservation integrations that surface preferences and allergens, plus AI tools for forecasting, ordering, and menu engineering. Prem Jethwa-Odedra of Biteluxe pointed to The Queen at Chester Hotel, where an AI WhatsApp assistant, Amanda, contacted guests before arrival and gently steered anniversary dinners and similar moments toward restaurant bookings, doubling the sleeper-to-diner ratio year on year.

Yet not every queue is a problem. In one Manhattan restaurant, only 10% used self-service kiosks; in another outlet, QR codes eased kitchen pressure, waits, and bill payment. The point is not more technology. It is better judgment. Posted on 24 May 2026

Hotels Won’t Become Wiser Until Their Managers Do

Artificial intelligence is drifting into hotels with the aura of a miracle appliance: install it, switch it on, become modern. AI does not rescue muddled management; it accelerates it.

In hotels, that matters because the business runs on endless tiny judgments: rates, staffing, room allocation, service recovery, housekeeping priorities, channel mix, food-and-beverage planning. Software can automate pieces of this, but automation is not the same thing as knowing what matters. A chatbot can reply. It cannot decide whether the reply fits the brand. A pricing engine can recommend a rate. It cannot fully weigh the long-term damage of teaching guests to wait for discounts.

The real test sits with middle managers: revenue, front office, rooms, sales, marketing, housekeeping, food and beverage. They are the people who decide whether AI becomes daily practice or expensive stage scenery.

The newer skill is not merely tool use but question design. Instead of asking what happened, managers need to ask what weak signals matter, which guests become loyal, where scheduling pressure predicts service decline, and which short-term wins quietly injure the brand.

Hotels that benefit most will build learning loops: accept, revise, or reject AI recommendations, record why, and review outcomes. The edge will come less from software than from managers capable of judgment, curiosity, and challenge.

Posted on 23 May 2026

GCC Hotels Are Bruised, Not Broken

The GCC hotel business is doing that thing where it smiles through gritted teeth and insists it’s fine, actually. It is not fine, but it is still standing.

A survey of owners, developers, investors, and hospitality real estate groups tied to about 160,000 branded rooms shows the 2026 U.S.-Iran conflict rattled the sector hardest through planes and nerves, not through a total collapse in travel demand. During the worst stretch, the wider region was losing an estimated US$600 million a day in visitor spending, with the disruption hitting during the lucrative March-to-May window.

Saudi Arabia made up 42% of responses and the UAE 34%, with Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar also represented. Hotel investment companies accounted for 38% of respondents, real estate firms 30%, and private investors 23%.

The mood is cautious, not catastrophic: 43% said they became more cautious, 34% saw no real change, and 22% felt more positive. About 83% still described the investment outlook as positive or neutral. Yet 45% reported delays to hotel projects. RevPAR took a beating, with 76% reporting moderate or significant declines and nearly half seeing drops above 20%.

Still, 57% said they could cover key obligations for at least six months. Most expect EBITDA recovery within six to 12 months. For now, cash preservation, deferred capex, and slower development rule the day, while domestic tourism and religious travel look like the least messy lifeboats.

Posted on 22 May 2026

A Monument to Multitudes in the Malaysian Highlands

One may travel far in search of magnificence and arrive instead at arithmetic. Such is the distinction of the First World Hotel & Plaza in Genting Highlands, Malaysia: not the grandest inn on earth, nor the most elegant, but the most populous. Across two vast towers in Pahang, some 50 kilometres north of Kuala Lumpur, it keeps 7,351 rooms in operation and thereby holds the world record.

Its rise was a contest of mere abundance. Opening in 2006 with “just” 6,118 rooms, it surrendered the crown in 2008 when the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas reached 7,128. Yet size begets size: a second tower restored the Malaysian resort to first place in 2015, where it remains.

The wonder is not beauty but utility. The hotel sits at the centre of Resorts World Genting, joined conveniently to theme parks and shopping centres, and near Malaysia’s only legal casino zone. In a region drawing millions of visitors from across South-East Asia, such placement is better than ornament.

Before COVID-19, occupancy averaged 90%; even now it is commonly near full. The house prospers by charging rates broad enough for ordinary purses and by relying on automated check-in to process the human tide. Its inventory is exacting: 3,164 standard rooms, 2,922 luxury, 649 luxury triple, 480 superior luxury, and 136 World Club rooms.

Posted on 19 May 2026