Alchemer just published its 2026 Hospitality Benchmark study where they surveyed over 1,000 travelers across the US.
Most of it confirms what you already feel in your bookings, but a handful of charts are worth a closer look. Here are the five that stand out.
1) Where the next decade of demand is headed
The divide is almost entirely about age. The under-30 crowd leans toward vacation rentals, while the 61-and-up crowd is the exact opposite, and it isn't close: 64% mostly hotels, 11% vacation rentals.
That’s a long-term tailwind for our industry, because the people who love vacation rentals the most are the ones with the most booking years ahead of them.
2) Younger guests are more difficult
Younger guests are the toughest crowd on the property. 35% of 18-to-29-year-olds flag a problem on their stay, compared with just 8% of the 61-plus crowd.
Disputes tell the same story: only 28% of the younger crowd say they've never disputed a charge, next to 71% of the older crowd.
Essentially, a guest under 30 is about 2.5x more likely to dispute a charge. It's interesting that guest’s age alone can tell you a lot about your refund risk.
3) The most important thing for guests
Cleanliness is the number one experience driver at 63%, sitting well above cost and value at 45%. It's also the top complaint when a stay goes wrong and the top reason guests hold back a 5-star review.
None of this is news to you. I'm including it because it never stops being true. In pretty much every survey that asks the question, cleanliness ranks as the most important thing for guests.
If the place isn't clean, nothing else matters. A spotless property is the biggest needle-mover that you can control.
4) What guests are looking for
Ask a hotel guest why they booked and you get “trust” and “safety”. Ask a vacation rental guest and you get a totally different answer.
"More space for the price" (55%), "full kitchen" (51%), "room for groups and family" (45%), "privacy" (43%), "feels like home" (37%). Those are the phrases already running through your guests' heads… so put them in your listing description.
If people tell you exactly what they're shopping for, a little sales trick is to use their own words to describe your product. Small tweaks like this compound into big increases in bookings.
5) Repeat guests are a goldmine
Booking platforms (47%) and Google (39%) are at the top of the list for discovery, no surprise there.
But look at the third bar… 30% of travelers say they booked a place because they’d stayed there before.
That's nearly 1 in 3 travelers booking a place they already stayed at. Are 1 out of 3 of your bookings coming from past guests? If not, ask yourself how easy it is for a guest to find their way back to you.
Get the guest's email on the first stay, keep in touch, and the second booking comes to you directly. It's the easiest booking you’ll ever get, and a huge boost to your profits.
Shameless plug: making this easy is exactly why I built GuestLink
It starts with one QR code on the fridge (far left). The guest scans, lands on your branded welcome page, gets the wifi password, and GuestLink keeps them coming back to book direct.
Join the GuestLink waitlist today
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