For decades, Venezuela has existed in a state of suspended potential – an economy with extraordinary natural resources, a strategic geographic position, and globally recognizable tourism assets, yet constrained by political instability, underinvestment, and deteriorating infrastructure.

There was a time when the universe felt simple. Not small, not fully understood, but conceptually clean. Things orbited other things. The moon orbited the Earth. The Earth orbited the sun. The sun, we eventually learned, orbited the center of the galaxy. It was a hierarchy of mass and motion, a choreography governed by gravity, predictable enough that we could model it, teach it to children, and trust it.

Welcome to the latest edition of Crowe/Horwath HTL Ireland’s Market Update, where we review Ireland’s hotel sector performance and consider emerging trends shaping the tourism and hospitality sector.

The Insurance market doesn’t care what governments think about climate – they are following the numbers and insurance premiums are going up because of that. Insurance providers are now acting as the hospitality industry’s ultimate regulators, pricing in $224 billion in annual climate losses that political manifestos choose to ignore. James Chappell and Alex Smith of FuturePlus dig in to what this dynamic means for hospitality asset values.