The Spotlight: A Lighthouse Podcast

The 2026 FIFA World Cup's group stage delivered a mixed picture for hotel occupancy across US host cities. Boston led the pack, building strong on-the-books occupancy as early as six months out, while Atlanta lagged behind due to a Monday kickoff and deeper hotel supply. By the closing group stage matchups, those early gaps narrowed sharply, with most cities reaching 85 percent occupancy or higher...

Booking windows across Asia Pacific span from 20 days to 85 days, and that gap changes how hoteliers should plan their marketing calendar. In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake explores Lighthouse Benchmark data from 7 Asia Pacific destinations in 2025, comparing booking windows and search windows market by market. Tokyo travelers plan nearly 3 months ahead with almost no gap between searching and...

When performance metrics, pace insights, and market benchmarks live in separate tools, revenue teams struggle to agree on the right move. In this Strategy Lab, Blake Reiter and Daniel Foreman show how working from a shared data foundation speeds up group displacement decisions — using a fictional wedding block RFP as the example: 10 rooms for 2 nights on a weekend a 60-room boutique hotel is alrea...

The 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow are driving a 153% increase in advertised hotel pricing compared to the same dates in 2025. But the more significant shift is structural: the Games compress the normal weekly pricing curve, with the largest year-over-year lifts landing on days that were historically discounted. Midweek nights like Thursday, July 30 are advertising 213% above last year's rates...

On May 7, ChatGPT began pushing more responses that included outbound links to hotel websites — and the traffic data shows it immediately. In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter walks through what the numbers look like before and after that date, including a 50%+ increase in AI-originated traffic as a share of organic search, jumping from roughly 2% to over 3%. The data makes clear that AI is...

ChatGPT now has 900 million users, and booking platforms are embedded in its ecosystem. A growing share of hotel decisions starts with an AI prompt, not a search engine. This episode presents original research from Lighthouse: 4,545 prompts across 9 global markets and 5 traveler personas, surfacing patterns in which hotels ChatGPT mentions, how often, and why. The data shows AI invisibility is the...

The Sundance Film Festival's move from Park City, Utah to Boulder, Colorado is already reshaping hotel demand and pricing patterns ahead of its first year in its new home. Boulder hotel rates during the festival period are currently advertised more than 3 times higher than comparable dates a year earlier, while demand has more than doubled. In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter explores how...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter explores how Madrid's return to Formula One is already reshaping hotel demand ahead of the city's first Grand Prix in 45 years. Advertised hotel rates for race weekend are more than double comparable 2025 levels, highlighting the scale of pricing power tied to major global events. Blake also examines direct booking data, revealing longer booking windows,...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter compares how Coachella and Stagecoach shaped hotel and short-term rental pricing across Palm Springs in 2026. Using Lighthouse actualized hotel pricing data and short-term rental gross ADR, he breaks down why Coachella hotel rates surged while Stagecoach hotel pricing declined despite both festivals selling out. Blake explores how headliner strength, boo...

With just weeks until kickoff, the 2026 FIFA World Cup is close enough for clear demand patterns to emerge. In this special Lighthouse x Expedia collaboration episode of The Spotlight Podcast, Daniel Foreman and Blake Reiter are joined by Bianca Navarro and Alex Fromson from Expedia Group for a market-by-market breakdown of the tournament’s hotel demand story. Using Lighthouse and Expedia data, th...

In this Strategy Lab, Blake Reiter and Daniel Foreman walk through how hotel commercial teams can identify pricing opportunities during periods of overlapping event demand. Using Lighthouse’s Smart Insights, forward-looking benchmarking and performance reporting, they show how to quickly surface dates that need attention and validate whether occupancy, rate positioning and segment mix support a pr...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter explores how Europe’s jet fuel crisis disrupted normal summer hotel pricing behavior across major leisure and metro markets. Using Lighthouse pricing data across seventeen destinations, he breaks down where pricing momentum stalled, which market types saw the largest swings and why flight dependency became a critical commercial risk factor. Blake also ex...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter explores how the 2026 March Madness tournament impacted hotel and short-term rental pricing across host cities. Using year over year ADR comparisons, he breaks down where hotels held pricing power, where short-term rentals outperformed and how market size and traveler behavior shaped results. Blake also examines lead time trends from the Final Four and c...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake explores how hotel pricing for the 2026 FIFA World Cup has evolved across host markets, with the latest data showing clear deceleration after early surges. While US cities average around 60% year over year growth, Mexico and Canada show stronger gains, though momentum has slowed since October. Blake breaks down how pricing power varies by market type, with lowe...

In this episode, Blake Reiter and Daniel Foreman analyze findings from a Lighthouse survey of 761 hospitality commercial leaders across six continents to understand how AI is being adopted today. The data reveals a clear disconnect: while belief in AI’s future impact is rising, current adoption remains largely unchanged. They explore where AI is being used, what’s slowing adoption, and how readine...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake explores how major concert tours influence hotel pricing, booking behavior, and length of stay across key markets. Using Lighthouse data, he compares the global impact of Harry Styles and BTS, highlighting how timing, geography, and fan base shape demand patterns. Hoteliers will gain a clearer understanding of how different event profiles affect pricing power,...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake explores how often third party websites undercut hotel direct rates across Asia Pacific and why frequency matters more than discount depth. Data from Lighthouse’s Bench Direct platform shows wide variation between markets, with Bangkok experiencing disparity more than one in three searches. Blake explains how persistent rate leakage impacts direct booking conve...

Taiwan shows one of the lowest direct booking conversion rates across major Asia Pacific markets, despite maintaining relatively strong rate parity. In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter explores why this disconnect exists and what it reveals about traveler behavior. Shorter booking windows and brief stays point to a mobile first, fast decision making guest profile. That shift places more pr...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake explores how one of the weakest ski seasons on record impacted hotel pricing in Vail. Snowpack levels fell sharply, skier visits declined, and resorts closed early, creating a clear demand shock across peak winter weekends. Blake compares advertised rates set in December with actualized pricing outcomes, showing how hotels were forced to discount far beyond ini...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake explores how the 2026 Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix overlapping with peak cherry blossom season is reshaping travel demand into Japan. Using direct booking data, he highlights shorter booking windows, a sharp increase in desktop usage, and a major shift toward international travelers. These changes signal higher intent behavior and a different customer mix than...

How will artificial intelligence change hotel operations, and what does that mean for service? In this episode, Daniel Foreman is joined by Juanjo Rodríguez, Head of Marketing and Direct Booking Products at Lighthouse, to speak with Sebastian Lodder, CEO of Hotel Collection International. Sebastian shares perspectives from operating across Spain and Georgia, working with both global brands and ind...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter examines how the August 2026 total solar eclipse is already impacting pricing and demand across Spain. Hotel rates along the path of totality are rising sharply year over year, with smaller markets seeing the most extreme increases. Blake also highlights how short-term rentals are pricing even more aggressively than hotels, alongside a significant spike...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter reviews how hotel pricing and occupancy actually performed during the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. Early advertised rates suggested record pricing, but final realized rates settled below those initial expectations. Even so, hotels still achieved substantial year over year gains, with four star properties leading the market. Blake...

In this Lighthouse Quick Take, Blake Reiter examines how booking window and conversion rates vary by traffic source across five of the world’s most visited countries in 2025. Using Lighthouse direct channel data, he compares search window, booking window and conversion performance across direct, meta search, traditional search and social media traffic. The data reveals clear behavioral differences...

In this episode, Blake Reiter and Daniel Foreman break down Lighthouse’s H2 2025 pricing report , analyzing year over year hotel pricing performance across seven global regions and forward indicators for H1 2026. They examine how pricing weakness persisted but moderated, where declines flipped to growth, and why North America remains under pressure despite the upcoming World Cup. The discussion hi...