Business

Corcoran Group CEO says Gen Z and millionaires alike are flocking back to the city—but return-to-office mandates aren’t the main reason

Published

3 months ago

November 5, 2025

The ultra-wealthy and fresh-faced graduates have one thing in common: After moving to the suburbs and on the coast for better work-life balance during the pandemic, they’re now flocking back to the city.

“We see wealthy people have been buying back into cities because they miss them—they miss the action,” The Corcoran Group CEO Pamela Liebman told Fortune, adding that “young people who also relocated have come back” to New York City. The obvious conclusion is that their employers have told them to.

Since last year, after Amazon launched its seismic 5-day mandate, corporate America has increasingly begun insisting that employees return to headquarters (or quit).

But Liebman insists that the decision to move back into major metropolitan hubs like Manhattan has less to do with RTO and more to do with a fear of being left behind in an uncertain job market.

“With some of these mandates, they are forcing some people to come back. But if you’re at the top of the heap, you sort of can work where you want, so you don’t necessarily have to come back,” the 63-year-old CEO with a 40+ year career in real estate said.

“Another thing I’ll tell you is that if you lose your job in New York City, it’s easier to find another one than if you lose your job in Palm Beach,” Liebman added. “So some people are concerned that they’re not going to stay in the same place forever—and when they think about their work trajectory, they sometimes think, let’s go where the real center of power is.”

Young millennials and Gen Z are following the same career hub logic

It’s not just seasoned executives snapping up pied-à-terres again. Liebman says Gen Z and young millennial workers are also returning to the city for proximity to opportunity.

With unemployment rising, the CEO explained that young people are hedging their bets on where they’re most likely to stumble on their next job—or boss.

“They want that life in their 20s where there’s a lot of action and where they can meet people, friends, partners,” Liebman said. But the reality is that they’re leaving school only to be met with a stale labor market as employers launch a “wait-and-watch strategy” in the midst of AI. Entry-level roles are becoming harder to come at major city-based employers, let alone on the outskirts.

“They’re not going to find that huge level of friendship and building blocks for your future life in some of these smaller, remote places, which were amazing for Covid but not amazing for the rest of your life,” added.

Now, those who relocated during the pandemic are having buyers-remorse; And those who planned to relocate this year are reconsidering.

“We were in charge of helping relocate from somewhere in the United States to Miami,” Liebman said. “A lot of the people would not come here—the younger people just starting their careers—because they were extremely fearful that if they lost their job, there would not be enough of a cushion, enough of a huge job market for them to fall back into, like in New York.”

The shift marks the end of the pandemic’s geographic free-for-all. Reality has hit: The fantasy of flexible living and a slower pace of life has collided with the fear of job insecurity in an economy defined by high prices, fierce competition, and a shrinking sense of stability. This experience has been a reminder that when things turn sour, it’s safer to be in a city.

“It’s no longer a pandemic, let’s have fun here for a couple months, which turned into maybe a year or two,” she added. “Before people make these big decisions on relocation, they make sure now that this is good for the long term.”

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Business

Davos 2026: reading the signals, not the headlines

Published

8 minutes ago

January 21, 2026

Jace Porter

Davos 2026: reading the signals, not the headlines | Fortune

Louisa Loran advises boards and leadership teams on transformation and long-term value creation and currently serves on the boards of Copenhagen Business School and CataCap Private Equity. At Google, Louisa launched a billion-dollar supply chain solutions business, doubled growth in a global industry vertical, and led strategic business transformation for the company’s largest customers in EMEA—working at the forefront of AI, data, and platform innovation. At Maersk, she co-authored the strategy that redefined the brand globally and doubled its share price, helping pivot the company from traditional shipping to integrated logistics. Her career began in the luxury and FMCG space with Moët Hennessy and Diageo, where she built iconic brands and led innovation at the intersection of heritage and digital transformation.

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Business

Hotels allege predatory pricing, forced exclusivity in Trip.com antitrust probe

Published

39 minutes ago

January 21, 2026

Jace Porter

China’s hotels are welcoming record numbers of travelers, yet room rates are sinking—a paradox many operators blame on Trip.com Group Ltd.

For Gary Huang, running a five-room homestay in the scenic Huzhou hills near Shanghai was supposed to secure his family’s financial future. Instead, he and other hoteliers in China’s southeastern Zhejiang province say nightly rates have fallen to levels last seen more than a decade ago, as Trip.com’s frequent discount campaigns force them to cut prices simply to remain visible on China’s dominant booking platform.

“The promotion campaigns now are almost a daily routine,” said Huang, who asked to use his self-given English name out of concern of speaking out against Trip.com. “We have to constantly cut prices at least 15% to attract travelers. We have no choice but to go along with the price cuts.”

Trip.com has been central to China’s post-pandemic travel rebound, connecting millions of travelers with small operators like Huang. But for many hotels, visibility—and sometimes survival—comes at the expense of profits.

That dynamic is now at the heart of Beijing’s antitrust probe. Regulators allege Trip.com is abusing its market position, with analysts citing deflation across the sector as the government’s main concern. Interviews with lodging operators, industry groups and travel consultants describe a system where constant price-cutting and opaque policies are eroding profitability, even as demand rebounds.

Trip.com has said it’s cooperating with the government’s investigation. The company’s stock dove more 16% since the probe was announced a week ago.

Revenue per room—a key hotel metric—was flat across China in 2025, even as other Asian markets saw gains, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Marriott International Inc.’s revenue per room in China fell 1% most of last year, while Hilton’s China room revenue trailed its regional peers.

The company controls about 56% of China’s online travel market, according to China Trading Desk, and has grown into the world’s largest booking site. Its dominance has helped fuel domestic tourism’s recovery—nearly 5 billion trips were logged in the first three quarters of 2025—but operators say the benefits are being offset by falling room yields.

“The market has developed unevenly and innovation is lacking due to monopolistic practices,” said He Shuangquan, head of the Yunnan Provincial Tourism Homestay Industry Association that represents some 7,000 operators. “The entire online travel agency sector is stagnating in a pool of dead water.”

‘Pick-one-of-two’

The broader challenge is oversupply and cautious consumer spending. In regions like Yunnan, hotel capacity has tripled since the pandemic, just as travelers tightened budgets. Consultants note that while people are traveling more, they’re spending less—leaving hotels slashing rates to fill empty beds and posting billions in losses.

For operators like Huang, the paradox is stark: the platform that delivers customers is also accelerating the race to the bottom. The complaints center around Trip.com’s “er xuan yi,” Mandarin for pick-one-of-two exclusivity arrangements—a practice that Chinese regulators have repeatedly vowed to stamp out.

Trip.com categorizes merchants into tiers with “Special Merchants” enjoying the most visibility and traffic, Yunnan Provincial Tourism’s He said. However, these top-tier merchants are typically prohibited from listing on rival platforms like Alibaba’s Fliggy, ByteDance’s Douyin or Meituan. Merchants who aren’t bound by these exclusive arrangements report being effectively compelled to offer the lowest prices on Trip.com’s online booking platform Ctrip, or risk facing a raft of measures like lowered search rankings.

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Business

CEOs at Davos are buying into the agentic AI hype

Published

1 hour ago

January 21, 2026

Jace Porter

Good morning. The atmosphere here at the World Economic Forum in Davos is all about nervous excitement as the Trump administration descends on the normally quaint but currently chaotic ski town in the Alps.

President Donald Trump will be making remarks just a couple hours from now, and Fortune will be reporting live from USA House on the main promenade, with insights from government officials and chief executives during and immediately following the president’s conversation. Keep an eye on our livestream, here https://fortune.com/2026/01/21/ceos-davos-buy-into-the-agentic-ai-hype/.

Elsewhere around town, CEOs are setting their agendas for the year. Here’s what’s top of mind for a few of them:

This will actually be the year of agentic AI. The first time I heard the term “agentic AI” was at Davos last year. For all the hype around it, does the average CEO really know what it is or how to deploy it? And is AI good enough yet for agents to replace or even significantly assist human employees? The answer appears to be yes. Google Gemini head Demis Hassabis told me that Gemini 3 achieved some milestones that allow agentic AI to truly proliferate in terms of its capabilities. ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott is also an emphatic “yes,” and says he is already using it to do things like automate his IT department (without doing layoffs, he stresses; he says he has repurposed employees instead). He thinks other CEOs are ready to do the same.

Get ready for Google glasses—for real, this time. A decade ago, Google launched its Google Glass eyewear to widespread mockery. Hassabis thinks the timing was just off; at the time there was no super app to go on the platform. AI has changed that, and Hassabis is bullish on Gemini glasses being the future form for consumer AI. Meta is betting the same thing, and OpenAI is also reportedly considering a super-device, but it doesn’t seem like either can match Gemini’s capabilities any time soon.

There’s artificial intelligence, and now there’s also “energy intelligence.” Schneider Electric CEO Olivier Blum says that nailing energy intelligence is his mission this year. By that he means he wants to capture data from various energy sources into a single “data cube,” filter it, and use agentic AI so customers can manage it all in one place to find opportunities to save power and money. “Our job is to make sure we go to the next level of energy technology to make energy more intelligent,” he told me yesterday. If he can achieve it, he sees a 7%-10% annual growth opportunity ahead.

Greenland: national panic or national security risk? I’ve heard various reactions to President Trump’s desire for a full U.S. takeover of the huge island—from outrage to vigorous support. If he does get his wish (which some here think is likely), could Europe retaliate by making life harder and more restrictive for big U.S. tech companies? That was one CEO’s consideration. Said another: “Clear-eyed people can agree that that is a national security concern. And having a national security concern is not just a U.S. concern, it’s also a NATO concern.” They were optimistic that the in-person meetings this week would help move the matter in a positive direction. You can follow all our Davos coverage—including Fortune live interviews today with Ray Dalio, Dara Khosrowshahi and more—right here.—Alyson Shontell

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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