GCC Recovery
The chains have already placed their ATM bets
UAE / Gulf
Arabian Travel Market's September 14–17 dates at Dubai World Trade Centre mark the show's third scheduled opening in 2026. The event shifted from its original May 4–7 window as regional disruption took hold, then moved again from August when organisers confirmed a September run that falls inside the Gulf's traditional slow-to-busy shoulder.[1]
The exhibitor commitments landed before the Q4 data did. IHG, Accor, Minor Hotels, Rotana, Hilton, Jumeirah, Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons, Rixos, and Sofitel are confirmed on the floor.[2] The tech side runs to a separate scale: ATM Travel Tech spans two dedicated halls with more than 180 exhibitors from 30 countries, anchored by an 850-square-metre Innovation Hub covering AI, VR, robotics, and fintech demonstrations.[3]
Chains don't book exhibition space to hedge — stand commitments are signed months in advance and cost real money. The roster arriving for September represents each company's own forward read on Gulf demand, settled before a single Q4 booking report lands. Skift noted in May that ATM's September dates fall into an already dense calendar of Middle East hospitality events, which carries its own signal: industry participants who had reason to avoid the region in the spring are now scheduling multiple trips into the same window.[1]
So what: When brands of this size confirm their presence, they're not commenting on the recovery — they're already positioned for it. September is when the room-fill test begins.
Distribution
Domestic demand carried Expedia and Booking past cross-border softness in Q2
Global / Middle East
Booking Holdings reported second-quarter gross bookings of $51.0 billion, up 9% year-on-year, on revenue of $7.4 billion (+8%).[4] The composition matters more than the headline: domestic room nights grew in the high single digits globally, while international room nights edged up only slightly — a split management attributed directly to continued pressure from the Middle East conflict on long-haul travel and airline capacity on affected routes.[5] Inbound travel to the Middle East remained under pressure; demand from Middle East-based customers was described as largely normalised. Booking executed a record $3.7 billion buyback and raised its cost-savings target to $650 million.
Expedia Group reported $33.9 billion in Q2 gross bookings (+12%) and $4.32 billion in revenue (+14%).[6] CEO Ariane Gorin pointed to the fastest U.S. consumer bookings growth in 15 quarters, and the B2B segment posted its 20th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, reaching $1.49 billion (+23%). Full-year gross bookings guidance was raised to $129.5–$130.8 billion. Booked room nights reached 111.5 million (+6%), and adjusted EPS of $5.76 beat the $5.23 consensus.[7]
Both companies beat estimates. Both told the same underlying story: a domestic floor absorbed the cross-border shortfall. The GCC's recovery will eventually have to contribute rather than subtract — the domestic tailwind can carry platform results for only so long.
So what: The platforms are fine. The real test in H2 is whether inbound Gulf travel normalises enough to carry its own weight, or whether Q4 GCC headline numbers are again a domestic story wearing a regional face.
US STR
Maui builds a hotel-zoning escape hatch for vacation rentals
United States — Hawaii
Maui County Council voted 7–2 in June to create new H3 and H4 hotel-district zoning categories, giving selected apartment-zoned condos a path to continue operating as short-term rentals under hotel compliance requirements — rather than the phaseout timeline of Ordinance 5909 (Bill 9), which Mayor Richard Bissen signed in December 2025.[10] Bill 9 phases out transient vacation rentals from apartment districts between 2029 and 2031, affecting roughly 7,000 units.
The council followed that in late July with a 7–1 vote sending 2,056 apartment-district units to the Maui Planning Commission to assess for H3 or H4 rezoning.[8] A second batch of 498 units — which would bring the total to 2,554, about 36% of the 7,000 units affected by Bill 9 — stalled in committee on August 7 after nearly three hours of public testimony, with the panel pausing without a vote.[9] The Planning Commission takes up the referred resolutions this week.
The mechanism matters more than the vote count. Maui isn't trying to repeal the STR phaseout — it's building a compliance tier that lets operators keep running if they accept hotel-grade regulation. That's a meaningful departure from the binary of ban-or-allow that most cities apply.
So what: If the hotel-rezoning path holds up through the Planning Commission, Maui will have created a legal precedent for other supply-tight markets: vacation rentals that accept hotel oversight survive; those that don't phase out. Other high-demand resort markets are watching.
Also worth watching
Westerly, RI. The Town Council meets today (August 17) on a proposal that would require most non-shoreline short-term rentals to be owner-occupied. The measure is not confirmed on the formal agenda as of this morning; a vote may slip to a later date.[11]
Pittsburgh STR. Two linked ordinances — zoning (Planning Commission September 8) and licensing (tentative Council vote October 21) — will set how Pittsburgh regulates non-owner-occupied STRs, with the zoning bill proposing to restrict off-site-owned units mostly to riverfront areas.[12]
Lawrence, KS retrospective. The city issued 26 temporary STR licenses for the World Cup window (May 25–July 26). A follow-up from the Lawrence Journal-World (August 6) described the result as modest relative to expectations — a small but concrete data point on how well temporary STR expansion as an event-demand lever actually delivers.[13]
Buena Vista, CO. A September 30 moratorium deadline is driving trustees to finalise per-district STR caps this month, with the most restrictive proposals confining new licenses tightly in R-1 zones.
ATM's chain commitments and the platform Q2 results both point to the same Q4 question: will GCC recovery carry its own weight in H2, or does domestic demand have to do the carrying again? September will start showing which read was right.
