In March 2017, the Waldorf closed its doors to begin major renovations. This included converting the 1,423 rooms of the elegant, storied hotel where celebrities lived and stayed, mostly into condominiums. It will reportedly maintain about 350 hotel rooms. AECOM Tishman has handled the demolition and pre-construction and will be overseeing the construction.

In February of 2018, Chinese regulators took over Anbang, and in May, in Shanghai its founder and former chairman, Wu Xiaohui was sentenced to 18 years in prison for fraud and embezzlement.

The Waldorf project's completion is scheduled for 2021 and condominium sales are expected to begin next year. Anbang further noted Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is the executive architect and Pierre Yves Rochon is designing the interiors. The project will include preserving the Cole Porter piano, the World's Fair Clock Tower, the Kennedy Rocking Chair and the MacArthur Desk.

“New York City continues to be the world's go-to tourist and business destination and, as a result, the hotel market remains one of the strongest in the country,” says Mark VanStekelenburg managing director of CBRE's hotels consulting, based in New York. He adds CBRE's forecasts are on par with the positive economic and tourism outlook.

Although hotels are enjoying a healthy market, earlier this summer at the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference, Jonathan Tisch, the CEO of Loews Hotels noted it could be even stronger. He pointed out the US share in global market travel has actually fallen 13% in recent years. He noted this meant missed economic opportunities. Tisch opined ways to increase US tourism even more, which included ending xenophobic national messages.

The CBRE report notes that even with the hotel construction boom, the supply is expected to stabilize. The brokerage's records also show that the number of hotel projects in the development pipeline is decreasing.

R. Mark Woodworth, senior managing director, CBRE Hotels' Americas Research, cautions against assuming national and NY statistics are universally applicable. Each market is local. He emphasizes that investors and developers need to be knowledgeable about the particular economies and market conditions of individual projects in different cities.