Conversations with Alexa and ‘Hey’ Siri about Inflation: Implications for Hotel Investment

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Key Takeaways

New voices entered some of our lives in the past couple of years. I refer to virtual assistants, such as Alexa and Siri. They are so proficient at answering questions about many topics, I assigned them a much more ambitious task: provide guidance about inflation in the U.S. —past, present and future. The decision to challenge these nice ladies in such a way is based on: (a) both having access to “big” databases and (b) the guidance about inflation offered by economists is unfulfilling. Why not ask Alexa and Siri? There might be some kernels of wisdom overlooked from my reviews of the professional and academic literature on why inflation has lagged in recovery and may accelerate soon. Given a keen interest in hotel markets, my goal is to understand how hotels will perform should inflation finally become a major concern.