The hotel industry ended the first quarter with a record-growth period, group business is holding steady, and with top 25 markets performing well, the industry overall is healthy. The second half of 2026 is favorable with the World Cup and the 250th birthday of the U.S. still to come. ALHI’s President and CEO Michael Domingues says ‘let's have a little bit of a pep in our step’ in this issue of Connecting the Dots.
Michael Dominguez: We're sitting here now at the end of March and we're in early April and we're looking at what has been happening in our industry. So, for this edition of Connecting the Dots, one of the things I really wanted to talk about is there seems to be this malaise and we have a lot going on in the world and we have a lot going on in Washington, and of course, not all of the news is positive. But there seems to be this malaise and this underlying goodness that's actually happening in our industry.
We ended up with the first quarter being a record-growth first quarter and that's on a very hard comparison to last year. That first quarter last year was pre-tariff, and we expected that to be a very hard comparison to be able to grow the way we did. So, what are we seeing? We're actually starting to see this bifurcation split that I have talked about for quite some time. We're starting to see that to subside just a bit. We're starting to see growth in all of the sectors, even the economy, the economy sectors downturn is getting smaller.
We're seeing a lot of travel and a lot of exuberance around travel. That is good news for all of us. We're seeing group hold steady. We're seeing the entire markets hold steady. Our top 25 markets are performing well. Overall, it's a pretty healthy industry, although it doesn't quite feel that way. I think that's an important thing to point out. I mean, we can talk about other economic indicators, which we will in another set, but to really look at our industry, overall, we're pretty healthy.
Overall, we're doing pretty well and that's with all the chaos going in the world. So, I really am hopeful without trying to be Pollyanna that as things start to subside, as things start to get resolved, specifically around the globe in the Middle East, what that means to oil and gas prices right now. With all those headwinds, we're doing well and I do think as that starts to subside, we should be able to run and that's exciting for us.
We still have a really exciting calendar for the rest of the year. We still have World Cup that is around the corner. We still have our 250th anniversary of our country and those birthday celebrations that will be happening over the summer. And we see a domestic traveler that is continuing on a very dramatic uptick. So yes, international has been a headwind. International has been down. We just finished up a meeting in Washington, and this is being filmed in mid-April, and what I can tell you is if we removed Canada from the numbers, we're up 1% internationally. So, it's not a universal conversation. We do have that challenge with Canadian travelers that is starting to get better, but it's going to take some time, and we still have a lot of work to do on the international side. But the positive of all of that is domestic has really shown tremendous growth and tremendous strength. We'll explain a little bit of that in the economic segment as far as what we saw in first quarter. But overall, our industry is doing really well coming out of the first quarter.
So, we should be feeling much better than we do and that is really my message to everybody. Let's have a little bit of confidence. Let's have a little bit of a pep in our step because the industry is actually doing okay right now. And with all the headwinds, we have we should all take that. I know personally I take that any day and I take it twice on Sunday.