Trump D.C. case thrown out: A federal appeals court Wednesday threw out a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s ownership of a luxury hotel five blocks from the White House. The court said the lawsuit failed to make a clear showing that Trump’s ownership of the hotel was creating competition with local convention centers, and that the local governments couldn’t show how any such competition, if it existed, could be legally prevented. It marks a defeat for Maryland and the District of Columbia, who claimed that his vast holdings presented a conflict between his business profits and the nation’s interest. A unanimous three-judge panel said the case was so weak that “it readily provokes the question of whether this action against the President is an appropriate use of the courts.” The ruling was the third defeat for claims against President Trump based on the Constitution’s emolument clauses. But another lawsuit, filed by members of Congress, has been allowed to proceed to the evidence-gathering stage. It claims that the president’s acceptance of foreign emoluments without congressional approval violates the Constitution.
Softer U.S. travel expected: Travel to and within the U.S. grew 3.2% year-over-year in May, according to the U.S. Travel Association’s latest Travel Trends Index (TTI), marking the industry’s 113th straight month of overall expansion. While this is up slightly from April’s 3% overall growth, the Leading Travel Index (LTI) predicts travel growth will soften through November 2019 as all travel segments experience softer growth. International travel grew only 1.2% in May, following three months of wide fluctuations due to the timing of Easter, which has historically been a peak travel time for visitors to the U.S. Over the next six months, the LTI predicts international travel growth will slow to just 0.4%. The outlook is brighter on the domestic travel side: domestic travel demand increased 3.6% in May, buoyed by growth in both the business travel and leisure travel segments. However, weakening consumer spending and business investment is projected to hamstring domestic travel growth over the next six months. The LTI predicts domestic travel growth will expand only 2% through November, with leisure travel outpacing business travel growth.
How clean are your sheets? A city in China is launching a high-tech system that reveals when hotel bed linen was last washed. A laundry service in Wuhan, central China, will implant microchips into bed sheets, towels and quilts, which can be read by guests’ cell phones to reveal the date of their last clean. Chips will be placed in the corner of the products by laundry service providing cleaning services for many of the city’s hotels and hostels, Chinese state-run media outlet Xinhua reported. The chips are water-resistant and able to withstand high temperatures, so they’ll survive multiple washes.
Domican Republic slide slows: The slump in bookings and jump in cancellations of flights to the Dominican Republic, which coincided with a number of tourist deaths there, at the end of May and early June, appears to be reversing, according to a report from ForwardKeys, which analyzes over 17 million flight bookings a day. From the June 1 to July 2, bookings for July and August from the U.S. to the Dominican Republic fell by 84.4% compared to the equivalent period in 2018. However, daily data reveals that bookings bottomed on June 19 and exceeded cancellations again on June 26. In the two months prior bookings had been up 2.8%. The decline in bookings to the Dominican Republic was offset by a surge in bookings for other Caribbean destinations, most notably Jamaica, Bahamas and Aruba. However, with the recovery in bookings for Dominican Republic, the surge of interest in those islands has slowed.
Oyo rolling: Oyo Hotels & Homes on Wednesday announced that the company is now the world’s third largest hotel chain (as per room count) as of June 2019 with nearly 23,000-plus Oyo-branded hotels and 850,000 rooms. Its growth is backed by a US$1.5 billion balance sheet, and fueled by the company’s success in China with over 500,000 rooms.
Avani to Krabi: Avani Hotels & Resorts, currently with 27 properteis, has signed two resorts in the southern Thailand resort town of Krabi. The existing resorts will undergo renovations to bring the properties in line with Avani standards and will be rebranded as the 83-room Avani+ Koh Lanta Krabi Resort, set to launch by mid-2020, and the 178-key Avani Ao Nang Cliff Krabi Resort, which will open its doors under the new branding in late 2019. The newly rebranded resorts will bring the number of Avani properties in Thailand to nine after Avani Sukhumvit Bangkok opens this month.
NewcrestImage preps for growth: NewcrestImage, Lewisville, Texas, has launched a nationwide expansion program of US$2 billion in growth by adding two veteran lodging and finance executives to its C-suite who have raised private equity funds and managed investment portfolios. Effective July 1, David Perel and Caroline Lerner Perel joined NewcrestImage as chief investment officer and chief development officer, respectively. Mr. Perel’s primary responsibility is to raise and invest US$250 million in equity with both institutional and non-institutional sources for investment within the lodging sector. Ms. Perel’s primary responsibility is to evaluate and recommend appropriate investment opportunities.