We're here, it's happening, 2026 is officially a thing. As we restart our brains for the new year, we ponder:

• Is Hushpitality a thing?
• The good news about global growth
• Fatigue as a good thing in travel
• The shift away from marquee names and places
• The shift toward shoulder seasons and cost concerns
• How travel will be shaped less by whims and more by economic realism
• Eastern Europe's rise as a travel alternative
• How refinancing pressure is going to reshape hotel ownership structure
• The literary and movie travel trend

When you walk into the Mayflower Hotel, it feels like a film set, the ideal visual representation of what a hotel should be. It is one of the most important venues in the shaping of America, hotel or otherwise. The conversations, the deals, the A-list encounters, the scandals that shook politics. It was a place that knew how to keep a secret. Until it didn't.

It survived depressions, wars, setbacks, inaugurations, ownership changes, and J. Edgar Hoover. This year marks its centennial, and we talk with one of its former employees to see inside "Washington's Second Best Address."

​​Nobody knows the ebbs and flows, ins and outs, weather patterns and trail ratings of Canadian tourism like Travel Alberta's CEO David Goldstein.

In a candid and free-flowing conversation, we talk about how and why tourism traffic and spend is (way) up in Alberta, as well as the province's approach to Indigenous tourism partnerships, balancing big-ticket destinations like Banff with worthwhile places off the beaten path, deciding which global markets to focus marketing on, Alberta's evolving image in traveler's minds, and how Canada's tourism initiatives are a best-in-class model. Plus the best ski slopes in Alberta, and the lifelong travails of being an Ottawa Senators fan.