The Hotel Is the New Flagship
While fashion houses brace for a hard winter, the luxury money is moving into rooms with a view. Europe’s hotel pipeline has never been this upscale.
Ask luxury executives where the growth is and, increasingly, the answer is not a handbag. A Deloitte outlook for 2026, cited this week by EHL Hospitality Business School, found that travel and hospitality was the category senior leaders rated as having the highest growth potential — ahead of every other luxury segment.
The pipeline reflects it. Analysts at Lodging Econometrics forecast just over 300 new hotels across Europe this year, an 18 per cent rise on 2025, and say luxury and upscale chain projects have reached record highs at close to 900 schemes. The mid-market, by comparison, is estimated at fewer than 500.
“An address you can sleep in, rather than one you simply shop at.”ÉPURE
The most symbolic opening of the year came in April, when Orient Express — operated in partnership with Accor and LVMH — opened a 47-room hotel inside a former Venetian palace. It is a neat illustration of where the industry thinks desire now lives: in an address you can sleep in, rather than one you simply shop at.
The shift is not confined to Western Europe. In Baku and Tbilisi, Azerbaijani developer PASHA has been adding branded hotels and residences with Marriott, while Almaty’s luxury segment, according to a recent regional report, still has more demand than rooms. We follow those stories in our Caucasus & Central Asia coverage.
Read next
Travel
Hermès Takes the Crown
For the first time, Hermès outranks Louis Vuitton as the world’s most valuable luxury brand. The ranking says as much about restraint as it does about size.
A Room with a Dolomite
The First Cortina opens on 4 December with 76 balconied rooms, a two-level REVĪVŌ spa and a view that does most of the work.
Art Basel Paris, Cut Short
The fair’s fifth edition closed two days early as protests loomed. The previews, by most accounts, had already done the selling.