How Hoteliers Are Banding Together in 2026 to Lower Insurance Premiums Nationwide

Hoteliers: This One Simple Step Can Lower Your Insurance Premiums While Simultaneously Generating Revenue. Band Together to Put a Stop to Rising Insurance Costs

Insurance premiums have become one of the fastest-growing and most painful expenses on a hotel’s profit and loss statement. According to CBRE, hotel insurance costs rose 19.5% year-over-year through the first nine months of 2023, after years of steady increases. Some hotels in high-risk coastal and catastrophe-exposed markets have seen renewals jump 25–50%, even with clean claims histories. The market has started to ease: broker IMA’s first-quarter 2026 outlook shows property rates falling for hotels with good loss histories, while liability coverage keeps getting more expensive.

Natural disasters, soaring reconstruction costs, and rising liability claims have carriers tightening terms and raising premiums. The old playbook — simply passing costs to guests through higher rates or quietly absorbing them — is no longer sustainable. Aggressive rate hikes can soften demand, while absorbing the increases quietly eats into your ability to reinvest in the property, staff, and guest experience.

There is a smarter path forward. Forward-thinking hoteliers, including many AAHOA members, are moving beyond fighting these costs in isolation. They’re banding together to share risk, strengthen negotiating power, and create new revenue streams.

The Power of Collective Action

When independent and boutique hotel owners collaborate on risk management and guest protection, the results are measurable:

• Improved overall loss history that insurers reward with better terms
• Stronger negotiating position at renewal time
• Faster recovery of disputed revenue that would otherwise be written off

The most effective strategies focus on preventing guest issues from escalating into formal claims and resolving disputes fairly and efficiently at the property level. Hotels that adopt this proactive, group-oriented approach typically see:

• Fewer claims reaching insurance carriers
• Better data and documentation for renewals
• Direct revenue recovery from incidents previously treated as losses

Why Banding Together Outperforms Going Solo

Traditional insurance is reactive. A collective approach to guest protection and dispute resolution is proactive. By addressing issues early and consistently across properties, hotel groups demonstrate serious risk management to carriers — the same collaborative philosophy that works for purchasing cooperatives and shared marketing programs, now applied to risk and revenue protection.

This shift turns hoteliers from price-takers in a tough insurance market into owners of their costs and outcomes.

Introducing RestAssure: A New Platform Built for Hoteliers

A new SaaS platform called RestAssure has been specifically designed to help independent and boutique hotel owners lower insurance premiums while generating a new revenue source.

RestAssure equips properties with tools for proactive guest protection and fast, fair dispute resolution. Many early partners are already seeing meaningful reductions in disputed revenue and incident-related costs, while building stronger overall risk profiles that translate into better insurance renewals.

By joining or forming a RestAssure-powered collective, you gain the scale, technology, and standardized processes that make banding together practical and highly effective.

Ready to Take Control of Your Insurance Costs?

Rising premiums don’t have to remain an unavoidable drag on your margins. By taking one strategic step — banding together with other hoteliers through proactive guest protection and dispute resolution — you can reduce exposure, strengthen your position with insurers, and unlock recovered revenue.

If you’re tired of watching insurance eat into your bottom line year after year, RestAssure was built for exactly this moment.

Ready to protect your revenue and explore collective solutions? Visit RestAssure or reach out directly to learn how your property (and your peers) can benefit.

Correction, September 26, 2026: An earlier version of this article said reinsurance rates for hospitality rose 20–50% in 2025 and that double-digit increases were continuing into 2026. Property-catastrophe reinsurance rates actually fell about 6% at the January 2025 renewals, and 2026 property rates are falling for many hotels with good loss histories. The 19.5% CBRE figure covers the first nine months of 2023. The article has been updated.

Sources and further reading

• Hotel Insurance – A Rising Expense With Limited Control — CBRE, 2024-02-28
• All Eyes on Operating Costs in 2025: Lessons Learned in 2024 — CBRE, 2025-05-08
• Hoteliers seek ways to ease insurance rate increases — CoStar, 2025-03-31
• How insurance has become a disruptive force in hotel underwriting — Hospitality Investor, 2025-06-23
• RestAssure Launches First-of-Its-Kind Guest Protection Platform for Hoteliers — Hospitality Net, 2025-08-21
• Property-catastrophe reinsurance rates at January 2025 renewals — Insurance Journal (Guy Carpenter data)
• Hospitality Markets in Focus, Q1 2026 — IMA