What's with the Pineapple? · 2026-08-06 · 9 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
59 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Isaac Collazo, analytics lead for the STR division of CoStar Group, briefs the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association board at their Grand Traverse Resort summer meeting on surprising industry momentum. The June performance benefited from the FIFA World Cup driving ADR growth of 13% in host cities, but the bigger story was unexpected strength in non-host markets. Collazo attributes this to conferences and events relocating to avoid World Cup premiums, a shift toward domestic travel (reduced outbound), and robust business transient volume recovery following what he calls "Liberation Day." Michigan specifically lags US average occupancy but presents untapped potential. The conversation touches on calendar dynamics - Labor Day timing, school start dates pushed into September benefiting hotels, and weather disruptions like winter storms and Canadian wildfires affecting demand unpredictably. Looking ahead, Collazo's 2027 STR forecast signals caution: without World Cup events and facing difficult year-over-year comparables, June and July will be challenging across 14 tracked markets. Holiday shifts (Valentine's on Sunday instead of Saturday, Easter moving to March 31) and variations in Jewish holiday dates add forecast complexity. The episode speaks directly to hotel operators and tourism boards assessing market dynamics and planning for headwinds.
Event planners moved conferences out of World Cup host cities to avoid premium pricing, international travelers reduced outbound travel and stayed domestic, and business transient demand bounced back strongly after a weak 2023, creating unexpected RevPAR growth in non-host markets.
The late Labor Day (September 4) combined with school start dates now pushed into mid-September extends the peak season by approximately one week, creating additional business and leisure travel opportunity for hotels and restaurants across the state.
STR projects 2027 will underperform 2026 due to difficult year-over-year comparables from the World Cup peak, absence of World Cup events, and unfavorable holiday calendar shifts including Valentine's Day moving from Saturday to Sunday and Easter moving to March 31.
Michigan's occupancy lags the national average primarily due to insufficient marketing and awareness - the state has unrealized tourism potential that requires stronger promotion and funding of destination marketing efforts like the Pure Michigan campaign.
No - while weather events like winter storms and wildfire smoke demonstrably impact travel demand, they cannot be reliably forecasted in advance, so STR's models focus on predictable calendar and historical patterns rather than weather variables.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains moderate substantive content about hospitality market trends, with specific data points on ADR growth and RevPAR movement, but is undermined by significant filler (intro throat-clearing, casual banter, incomplete thoughts). The guest delivers useful insights on World Cup displacement and demand drivers, but the conversation lacks depth and often trails off without follow-up, and much of the 9 minutes is devoted to setup and procedural chat rather than substance.
ADR for those host cities throughout the six weeks up about 13%. I thought it was gonna be about 12%.
we are actually seeing again more people, uh, staying in the US
The analysis relies on standard hospitality metrics and fairly conventional explanations (event displacement, competition effects, holiday calendar shifts). While the World Cup impact data is topical, the frameworks and reasoning are familiar to industry practitioners; there is no contrarian thesis, first-principles thinking, or novel angle that would surprise a seasoned operator.
Event planners didn't want to pay the extra premiums in the markets hosting the World Cups
we have some calendar shifts, we have a very late Labor Day
Isaac Collazo brings genuine authority as head of analytics at STR/CoStar, a major industry data provider, and demonstrates real-time market knowledge. However, his positioning is primarily as a forecaster and analyst rather than as an operator who has built or run a hospitality business at scale, which limits the practical hands-on insight a founder or C-suite operator might extract.
Isaac is the guru, the man running all, uh, analytics at STR division of Co Star Group
we already have a forecast we issued back in June at the NYU hotel conference
The episode includes concrete data points (13% ADR growth, occupancy gaps vs. US average, 14 STR markets tracked) and specific examples (Detroit, Nashville, Traverse City, winter storm Fern), but lacks depth on dollar figures, timelines, and comparative metrics. Many claims are stated without supporting evidence - e.g., business transient recovery or conference displacement are mentioned but not quantified or cited to specific data.
ADR for those host cities throughout the six weeks up about 13%
Detroit was the closest, they're the closest to being at the average
Host questions are mostly softball and reactive rather than probing; follow-ups are shallow, and several substantive claims go unchallenged or unpursued. The host asks one unprepared question about weather impact, which is good instinct, but mostly defers to the guest without pressing on forecasting assumptions, data limitations, or strategic implications. The conversation feels like a board meeting soundbite rather than a deep investigation.
What do you think is driving that?
This isn't a question we prepped at all, but it just hit me.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
We're coming to you live from the 2026 MRLA Summer Board Meeting at Grand Traverse Resort, and we pulled Isaac Collazo aside before he took the stage to give us a few minutes of tell us more on the state of the hotel industry. Isaac leads analytics at STR, a division of CoStar Group - the people who quite literally wrote the book on hotel market data. If anyone knows where this industry is heading, it's him. We got into what actually drove that surprisingly strong June, what Michigan's numbers look like from the outside, and what operators should temper their expectations about heading into 2027. Spoiler: the World Cup isn't coming back next year. Our chairman Peter Beukema joins us too, with a Michigan operator's view from the ground. Short, sharp, and packed with data. This one's worth your commute. Listen to Isaac's podcast, Tell Me More, here:
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Okay, ready?
Speaker B: This is it. This is the show. What's with the Pineapple? A podcast from the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association.
Speaker A: Pineapples don't grow in Michigan.
Speaker B: No, not native to Michigan. Let me write that down. Putting a hospitality, uh, spin on what exactly is going on in Lansing. Shed some light on the industry, specifically in Michigan. I think we're gonna have some good guests.
Speaker A: What is with the Pineapple? What's with the industry? What's going on in Michigan?
Speaker B: We can edit this if that's not right. Right.
Speaker C: Foreign.
Speaker B: Good morning and greetings from Grand Traverse Resort here in Traverse City, where we are at the 2026 summer board meeting for the Michigan Restaurant Lodging Association. We are blessed to have with us this morning Isaac Collazo, uh, who will be presenting to our board, uh, almost momentarily here. So we're going to keep this one nice and tight. Isaac. Uh, but for those who don't know and are listening, Isaac is the guru, the man running all, uh, analytics at STR division of Co Star Group. And with us as well is our chairman, Mr. Pete Bukuma. Gentlemen, welcome to you both.
Speaker D: Thank you.
Speaker C: Morning.
Speaker B: Good morning.
Speaker A: Morning.
Speaker B: All right, Isaac, we're here to tap your brain while the few minutes we have here. Talk to me about, you're gonna, you're gonna talk about the state of the industry. We just had a, uh, surprisingly great June in the industry, even here in Michigan. Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker D: Well, I don't think it was surprising from my perspective. We did have a little bit that we kind of knew about a few years ago called the World Cup. Right. Well, what's surprising again, the World cup performed as we expected. So it was on ADR driven event in the host cities. ADR for those host cities throughout the six weeks up about 13%. I thought it was gonna be about 12%. And so that. That was a little bit better. What was more surprising was the revpar outside the World cup cities. And we saw that grow much stronger than we anticipated. That we in that even we forecasted that was a complete surprise to us. We knew there'd be displacement in the World cup markets. We just didn't expect the amount of movement and just the strength in a lot of these markets.
Speaker B: What do you think is driving that? Is that repositioning convention business outside of those host cities or what's. What's causing that?
Speaker D: Kind of a little bit of everything. But yes, part of it was conferences moving out. Event planners didn't want to pay the extra premiums in the markets hosting the World Cups because they had such a high premium at that point. Also we saw a, for the first time we're seeing outbound travel slow. So we are actually seeing again more people, uh, staying in the US So that was a big move. Since the beginning of the year, we've seen business transient return as well. So last year was a very, you know, low volume year, uh, for multiple reasons. Obviously after Liberation Day and everyone got a little scared this year, it just, all of a sudden everything just boomed back. So that's still moving in through. We also had easy comps in some of these markets. Sure. And you have to just remember it's like, yeah, so, but again, overall the demand side. So forget the ramp part, just look at the demand piece. And the demand piece, really much stronger than we truly anticipated at the beginning of the year.
Speaker B: Peter, you seen that in Michigan?
Speaker C: Yeah, we've seen a nice pickup. But I think the, the impact as we were talking about earlier will be seeing what happens here over the next few weeks now at the World Cup's behind us. And, and how does this wave continue?
Speaker D: Yeah, and it's, there's a lot of questions and we have, it's, we have some interesting impacts. Right. We have some calendar shifts, we have a very late Labor Day. So that theoretically that should be good, I think. Uh, but then in the south where we were located in Nashville, schools begin next week, which is just surprising the heck out of me. And it's just like, wow. So we just trying to figure, it's like, how will this all shift? But the holidays are favorable, so the Christmas holidays, New Year's holidays, and again a three day holiday. So we have, I mean a three day weekend kind of thing. And so I think hopefully it looks good, but it's just unknowns. Uh, and then we also have shifts in Jewish holidays.
Speaker C: Well, and so Michigan had a law requiring schools to start post Labor Day and that has kind of gone by the wayside for a lot of reasons we won't get into today. But with that holiday being pushed basically a week into September, it's going to be really, I think good for the hotels and the restaurants across the state because it's going to essentially give us the post Labor Day extra week of business without, you know, schools starting later. So I think that's going to be good for it.
Speaker A: This isn't a question we prepped at all, but it just hit me. Do you guys have any data on how like not necessarily school start, but with the weather shifting so much, at least we feel that in Michigan like September feels like June now. So does that impact your data forecast?
Speaker D: It doesn't really impact. We, you know it does obviously it does impact any kind of weather event, uh, could cause displacement. Could you know again think about earlier this year the fern, the winter storm fern really disrupted travel for a good week. Right. So that has real impacts. In fact January would have been much stronger had we not had that weather event that so many people just impacted. So yes, but we don't take that into our forecasting because we can't, we just don't know. Uh, but we have seen interesting enough is like in Europe they're having heat waves actually Europe's doing fine and we, we were surprised. Now these fires that are going now could change everything.
Speaker B: So subject here in Michigan, Canadian, Canadian wildfire is really impacting some uh, some of the business here lately.
Speaker D: But ah, we just don't. Yeah but you don't know when the smoke's going to come over. I mean there's no way to predict that. Right. So if you're planning your vacation, you and you get here and there's smoke though you're here, you're here.
Speaker B: So well you're a Nashville guy. You have national international scope. But what is the perspective from outside of Michigan in on Michigan a tourism destination as an asset? What are the thoughts?
Speaker D: Uh, yeah, what I saw in the data is again you're lagging in some occupancy, right. And so you're below the US Average and you'll see that later in the board meeting where all the markets are below. I think Detroit was the closest, they're the closest to being at the average. And so there's opportunity, there's opportunity to really sell the states. Beautiful first time on this part of the state because I normally m only, I only see airports. That's my life. It's an airport to an airport. But it's nice to be here. So I think there's a lot of opportunity. There's. It's just a matter of getting the word out.
Speaker B: We got to get you back up to northern Michigan. Summer is pure beauty and under, under realized frankly because we don't fund our Pure Michigan campaign.
Speaker D: Quite the Uber driver is giving education.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker D: He was giving me and telling me all the great things to do here. It was really a fun drive.
Speaker C: And for those listeners, I don't know if we said this yet but we're live from the Grand Traverse resort for our 2026 summer board meeting. And so I'm really looking forward to uh, spending some time with Isaac Today and unpacking more of the uh, Where's Michigan going?
Speaker D: Right.
Speaker B: If you will. All right, last question here and we'll get you out of here because I know you got to get on stage in just a minute. Str coming out with the big 2027 report soon. Any intel you can give us.
Speaker D: The intel is you shouldn't expect next year to be as good as this year. I mean that's the intel. Right. And I don't think that's a surprise because we already have a forecast we issued back in June at the NYU hotel conference and we already were showing that it was going to be lower than this year. And it's all. It's because again, you're going to have difficult comps. You're not going to have the World Cup. So June and July are be really difficult months for several markets. 14 markets that we were tracking for the World cup, even though there were 11 host cities, ended up being 14 STR markets. So I think that's going to be the key. You have shifts in holidays next year that are pretty significant. Right. And the one thing that we're watching that we cannot figure out is like February this year. February is really strong because Valentine's was on a Saturday. That is the best day to have Valentine's. We should make that a law on a Saturday. Next year's on a Sunday. So it's still a three day weekend.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker D: But it May and it's President's weekend as it was this year. But our history shows it won't be as strong. And that's so again you have all these little shifts back and forth and you have the shifts in Jewish holidays shifts and Easter, which is now March 31, so lots of movement and it's going to be really interesting to see how that all plays out.
Speaker B: Interesting. Well, I'm excited to hear more on the full presentation. Uh, but thank you for taking a few minutes for being on. What's with the pineapple?
Speaker D: Thank you, Justin.
Speaker A: Thank you.
Speaker D: Mhm. Sam.
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