Forget What’s Next—What’s the Next Big Thing?

Van’ advises hotel owners not to ignore the economic outlook, but also not to waste “a ton of time or energy making big changes to your business strategy based on constantly shifting and notoriously unpredictable forecasts.”

DALLAS—Most everyone in the hotel business is pretty upbeat these days. The consensus is that the sustained growth we’ve seen recently is basically set to continue through at least the next six to 12 months. Constrained supply is good news, and one thing that’s constraining supply for the first time in a long time is some conservatism on the part of banks who are making loans.

But honestly, that’s all pretty boring. You can read about that stuff anywhere. You don’t want to hear me add my two cents. Not only because it’s just more of the same, but also because predicting markets and economic trends is a sucker’s bet. I see a lot of people devoting a lot of time and energy trying to make predictions about things you just can’t predict. For example: is the economy going to keep growing? I’m not sure how many Nobel Prize winning economics experts are out there, but I guarantee you one thing: not a single one of them knows with certainty what’s going to happen.