In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono conducted their two "bed-ins" for peace at hotels, the Amsterdam Hilton and Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel, even going so far as to record "Give Peace a Chance" at the latter property.
These days, peace is the last thing on the minds of hoteliers, whose theme song, if they had one, would likely be Bob Marley's "Fussing and Fighting." The dons of hospitality are behaving more like "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler and Thomas "Hitman" Hearns in their 1985 brawl at Caesars Palace.
Despite international visits to the U.S. reaching at an all-time high and hotel room rates approaching prerecession levels, hoteliers seem to be taking a less-than-collegial stance with each other.
Much of the sturm und drang surrounds upstarts edging in on the business of established lodging operators, whether the newbies are overseas-based hoteliers making U.S. debuts or purveyors of less-traditional types of accommodations, such as vacation rentals or single rooms.
The latter category, also known as "sharing economy" products, is best represented by Airbnb, which recently secured a funding round that values the company at about $10 billion. The home- and room-listing service had been looking to make nice with San Francisco and Portland, Ore., announcing last month that it would collect and pay occupancy taxes to those municipalities on behalf of its hosts.
But while that move was part of a touchy-feely initiative it called "Shared Cities" (even going so far as to vow to get Airbnb hosts to donate to local charities), company founder Brian Chesky apparently doesn't feel quite as buddy-buddy with hoteliers who protest that Airbnb is stealing their business.
In fact, Gawker's Silicon Valley media blog, Valleywag, earlier this month posted a picture of Chesky's girlfriend in an Airbnb-hosted room with the note "F*** Hotels. Love, Brian." (Airbnb did not respond to a request for comment from Travel Weekly last week.)
But sniping volleys are not limited to old guard/new guard tiffs. Recently, they have even been erupting among more established, generally staid industry leaders who typically sport an unruffled facade.
Just last year, Starwood Hotels & Resorts CEO Frits Van Paasschen, whose company's luxury brands include St. Regis and W, used the American Express Luxury Summit to take a thinly veiled shot at competitor Ritz-Carlton, implying that the Marriott International luxury badge's "ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen" service proposition had become outdated.
Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson tried to take an above-the-fray approach in a recent Travel Weekly interview but still asserted that "criticizing Ritz-Carlton for its service equation is like criticizing Germans for their engineering or Italians for their cuisine."
And if you think the verbal sniping is limited to competitors going at each other, think again. Boutique hotelier Morgans Hotel Group engaged in a proxy battle with its largest shareholder group that seemed straight out of "Days of Our Lives." The fight climaxed last June with a shareholder vote that ousted both the company's board of directors and its CEO.
But it didn't end there. Despite boosting room revenue and cutting both the company's net loss and interest rates on its debt as well as corporate expenses, the new board is now subject to another proxy battle from investor Kerrisdale Capital Management.
The directors went on record in an April 16 note calling Kerrsdale's proposed new board "myopic," "inexperienced" and "misguided."
With the backbiting and sniping from new-school and traditional lodging operators alike, the hospitality industry leaves me wondering, in the words of Rodney King (no relation), "Can't we all just get along?"
Indeed, it can be argued that there's plenty of travel-spending cash to go around and that it has never been a better time to be a hotelier, especially with new supply growing at a snail's pace. Last year, the country's revenue per available room (RevPAR) rose 5.4%, with most of that advance coming from profit-fattening room-rate increases, according to STR.
Meanwhile, last year, the number of foreign visitors to the U.S. rose 4.7%, to 69.8 million, and those visitors boosted stateside spending 9.1%, to $181 billion, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Both the visitor counts and spend were annual records, and those numbers are slated to jump another 43% and 38%, respectively, by the end of the decade.
Things even look rosy for hotels catering to the business-travel sector, where growth in recent years has lagged the rebound in leisure spending. Earlier this month, the Global Business Travel Association raised its 2014 U.S. business-travel spending growth forecast to 7.1%, from 6.6%.
In the meantime, all of that increased demand is pulling more investors into the industry, giving hoteliers looking to go with an asset-light strategy all the more chance to profitably cash out while retaining management contracts. Last year, about $16.9 billion worth of U.S. hotels changed hands, up 30% from 2012.
With such a relatively cushy environment -- at least relative to five years ago -- all the sniping may spur some kinder-hearted folks to wonder, in the words of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, circa 1972, "Where Is the Love?"
Naturally, the Big Apple is where much of the contentiousness is front and center, and not just because both Starwood and Morgans are based there.
With New York also attracting an annual record number of visitors in 2013 and continuing to have easily the highest hotel-room rates in the U.S., the higher stakes are spurring new entrants such as CitizenM to take something of a bare-knuckles approach to getting its point across.
The Amsterdam-based hotelier, which opened its first U.S. property in New York last month, literally took its message to the streets by renting a stretch limo, on the side of which was printed the slogan "Luxury is free WiFi and XL beds, not a stupidly long car," then parking it in front of hotels such as the Trump International, the Plaza and the Grand Hyatt New York.
And even when Airbnb offers what it is positioning as an olive branch of sorts to New York by offering to collect and remit occupancy taxes on the part of its hosts, the company says that effort is being rebuffed by local hotel lobbyists who want the service to disappear altogether.
That said, there's at least one good sign that many travelers and prospective hotel guests aren't buying into the pugilistic rhetoric.
While there's been no shortage of hand-wringing over Colorado this year becoming the first place in the world to legalize marijuana sales to anyone over 21 for any reason, travelers have become downright amorous for the state's capital, Denver, and its new distinction as ground zero for legal weed.
In fact, the Mile High City's hotels last month saw a 37% year-over-year RevPAR surge, easily the biggest jump among the largest 25 U.S. markets.
Could that be the kind of happy result that finally has hoteliers reaching for a peace pipe?
Contact Danny King at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter.
Correction: The Morgans Hotel Group investor is Kerrisdale Capital Management. Kerrisdale was misspelled in a previous version.