Biggest Innovators in Travel and Hospitality: Summer 2026

We’re back with another biannual best-of, highlighting the places, experiences, and people that stood out in an increasingly crowded hospitality landscape. This has been a record travel year for me, and the physical and mental notebooks are unusually full. Most observations became columns. The ones I kept returning to in my head ended up here. The sheer volume of development has made discernment more important. In a market full of launches, wellness claims, and ever-higher rates, the things that stayed with me tended to show judgment, nerve or both: a prison converted without erasing its past; a school returned to a neighborhood; an airport lounge designed to give travelers 35 productive minutes; and a local airline that remains charmingly homespun. I’m also heartened by the flourishing of travel writing across every channel. There are smart new writers getting closer to the ground truth and paying attention to the small bits of craft that make hospitality g