Kitsch a glimpse. Too many years in the making, we are starting to get some reveals of the expected 2018 opening of the TWA Hotel at New York’s JFK Airport, house in the 1962 Jetson-styled TWA Flight Center terminal desined by Eero Saarinen. A lounge that will function as a sales center for the hotel just opened in the One World Trade Center.—Jeff Weinstein
A bad bet: Three years ago, U.S. investor John Paulson predicted Puerto Rico was the way of the future for the wealthy and then proceeded to buy up the real estate (including high-end hotels) to back that bet up. Since Hurricane Maria swept through and ravaged the area, things aren’t looking so good.—Chloe Riley
The room where it happened: HOTELS blogger Larry Mogelonsky recently wrote about how one Toronto hotel has memorialized the guest room where John Lennon and Yoko Ono held a “bed-in” protest. The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, is now a museum. So what happens to the 32nd floor room in Mandalay Bay? A hospitality professor suggests that it will be gutted and renumbered or turned into storage space. “For people to go on — whether it be survivors, the families of the victims or employees — something has to happen so that that room does not stay as a reminder of this heinous act,” he says.—Barbara Bohn
Beverly campers: Looing for new ways to market that suite? Make like the Beverly Wilshire (A Four Seasons Hotel) and turn it into a glamping haven. As of this fall, the 395-room property will open its 10th-floor Veranda Suite to guests who don’t mind roughing it (albeit luxury-style) with an urban-camping experience, complete with gold leaf s’mores.—C.R.
Fork in the road. Plant-based foods are about to go mainstream, says New York City-based F&B consultant and writer Michael Whiteman. Calling it the 2018 food trend of the year, Whiteman cites how millennials and Gen Xers are embracing plant-based food while still young, and are likely to stick with it.—J.W.