Status matters to travelers. The usefulness of loyalty programs for many road warriors isn’t the free trips with accumulated miles or points. It’s the perks that come from qualifying for elite tiers: better seat selection, early boarding, free checked bags, upgrades, priority for rebooking and standby seats, special phone numbers and priority queues at airports.

The franchise companies leading the U.S. construction pipeline with the greatest number of new construction projects are Marriott International with 1,286 hotels and 166,174 rooms, Hilton with 1,223 hotels and 139,742 rooms, and IHG Hotels & Resorts with 769 hotels and 77,558 rooms. These three franchise companies comprise 68 percent of the total construction pipeline projects.

Sunstone Hotel Investors has agreed to pay about $175 million for the 85-room Four Seasons Napa hotel. The price tag amounts to about $2.1 million per hotel room key. When the Four Seasons sale closes, it will be the second highest valued U.S. hotel deal ever,

Highgate and Cerberus will acquire all outstanding shares of CorePoint common stock in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.5 billion based on the $15.65 per share consideration, which reflects the assumption of current net debt.

As of September, there were 1,364 hotels in construction in the U.S., representing 172,251 rooms. Additionally, there are 1,867 hotels with 205,829 rooms in the final planning phase and 2,217 hotels with 263,673 rooms in the planning phase.

Airbnb posted record revenue in the third quarter, punctuating its rebound from the collapse in bookings during the early days of the pandemic.

The American Hotel and Lodging Association estimates the industry lost $49 billion in business-travel revenue in 2020 compared with 2019. It’s also on pace to finish with $10 billion less in business-travel revenue this year compared with 2020.

Hotel data and analytics firm STR is projecting that about 1 billion U.S. hotel rooms will be booked this year, up from 829 million in 2020, but still below the record year of 2019, when guests booked 1.3 billion rooms.

Big hotel companies are adding more all-inclusive resorts, betting that the pandemic will boost a business model that encourages guests to stay in one place. These resorts, where customers pay a flat fee that covers their room, food, drinks and other services, have recovered from the shock of the pandemic faster than other types of hotels.

Third-party hotel management companies Benchmark Global Hospitality and Pyramid Hotel Group announced they are merging to create Benchmark Pyramid.