How miserable will the economy get, and how will it affect companies’ business travel and meetings? Most industry insiders don’t see the reality as being as stark as the media pictures it. As Jan Freitag, vice president for global development at Smith Travel Research in Nashville put it, “There’s an interesting disconnect here. The sentiment of the investment community and bankers seems to be very dire, yet for hotel operators things don’t appear quite so bad. They are cautiously pessimistic. They are waiting for something to hit them, but they don’t see it in their group bookings. And when in doubt, we listen to the operators.”...
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