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The 4 Biggest Questions Facing the Cruise Industry

In many ways, cruise ships were one of the first places where many of us saw the effects of COVID-19. Our understanding of the virus was in its infancy, but suddenly images of passengers stranded for weeks on these ships began to appear on the evening news. What began as an exciting adventure for…

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In many ways, cruise ships were one of the first places where many of us saw the effects of COVID-19. Our understanding of the virus was in its infancy, but suddenly images of passengers stranded for weeks on these ships began to appear on the evening news.

What began as an exciting adventure for many travelers quickly turned into a nightmare situation. Now, 18 months later, the cruise industry is wrestling with how to repair its reputation and rebuild its business. For answers, I turned to Dr. Keri Lestage, Chief Science Officer at ByoPlanet, to ask her four crucial questions currently facing the cruise industry.

1. What is needed for the cruise industry to fully bounce back and for consumers to have confidence to embark on cruises once again?

2. How can the cruise industry create an environment that is safe for travelers?

3. What specific challenges are presented by cruise lines that make them difficult to sanitize?

4. What can the industry learn from the COVID outbreak in 2020 and how can it improve in the future?

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More Hospitality Insights

If a competitor's move triggers your rate change, that is market-based pricing, not dynamic

If a competitor's move triggers your rate change, that is market-based pricing, not dynamic

Lighthouse writer Joe Hanly published a ten-strategy hotel revenue management guide on Hotel News Resource on September 8, ranking real-time dynamic pricing first. Its most useful content is a test: a hotel whose rate changes mostly follow a competitor's move is running market-based pricing, whatever it is called internally. A companion explainer says audit the compset and rate plans first.

  • 01Market-based and dynamic pricing both watch competitors; the line Lighthouse draws is whether a competitor's rate is the trigger or one input alongside local events, booking pace and market trends.
  • 02Properties that have gone years without a structured rate-plan review often carry more active plans than anyone tracks, and those legacy floor rates and stay restrictions sit under any pricing engine layered on top.

Sep 18, 2026

STR said summer 2025 was the weakest in four years so far

STR said summer 2025 was the weakest in four years so far

STR said summer 2025 was the weakest U.S. hotel summer in four years: as of an Aug. 22 weekly report (with two weeks left), hotels had sold 1.4 million fewer room nights than summer 2024 and top 25 market weekday RevPAR was down 2.3% in mid-August. STR said business travel plateaued while leisure held up weekends. Hotel Dive reported widespread U.S. RevPAR growth in Q1 2026, making 2025 the comparison base.

  • 01Weekday performance is the cleaner read on corporate demand: in the week ending Aug. 16, 2025, top 25 market weekday RevPAR fell 2.3%, per STR; in that same STR update, non-metro and rural areas posted a 0.7% full-week RevPAR gain.
  • 02The 2025 demand loss was concentrated, not spread evenly: STR traced 45% of the economy-class decline to 10 markets, with Houston and Las Vegas alone near a quarter of it, so a national average can hide a very different local picture.
  • 03The gap between occupancy on the books and occupancy actually realized, flagged by CoStar in Las Vegas, Houston, Philadelphia and Orlando in June 2025, is a sharper thing for a revenue manager to track than headline RevPAR.

Sep 18, 2026

Aimbridge's LIFT tool flags hotel staffing gaps before the financials do

Aimbridge's LIFT tool flags hotel staffing gaps before the financials do

Aimbridge Hospitality has rolled out LIFT, an in-house labor tool, portfolio-wide. It puts forecasting, scheduling and on-floor actuals into one view, and pilot hotels saw the largest productivity gains in housekeeping and laundry. For owners, Aimbridge positions it as a way to spot staffing variance sooner than waiting for month-end financials.

  • 01Hotel Business describes LIFT as a proprietary tool that Aimbridge has launched across its own portfolio, which turns labor analytics into a point of comparison between third-party operators.
  • 02Housekeeping and laundry were where pilot hotels saw the biggest productivity gains, which suggests demand-driven scheduling tools have the most room to act in departments where daily workload swings with occupancy.
  • 03Aimbridge has not published numeric pilot results; the signal to watch is whether it releases labor-cost or GOP flow-through figures from the full rollout, which would give owners a real benchmark.

Sep 17, 2026

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