Are we at good afternoon yet? At least we're about there. Good afternoon, everyone. We're thrilled to have Hyatt here today. We have CFO Joan Bottarini, and then Adam Rohman, SVP of IR and Global FP&A and Treasurer. I think we can probably start off pretty high level. There's obviously been some news lately in the world on a geopolitical front. Can you just talk about what you're seeing across your business globally in terms of Middle East exposure? You know, I know it's a very fluid situation for sure, but kind of how are you seeing the business evolve over the past couple of weeks, any interruptions? Then can you talk about also the other regions that could be kind of indirectly impacted by what's been going on?
Sure. Well, first, let me start out by saying thank you, Dan, for the invitation. This is a great conference, and my flight last night was fully booked, which is great.
That's a good channel check for Vegas.
Yeah. I love to see that all the time, as far as travelers getting on the road and a lot in suit jackets, too. Business travelers getting on the road is good, too. Let me take a step back before getting into the events.
Core business has been very encouraging, strong end to the year last year, and the first couple of months this year. We're seeing strength as well in Leisure travel in particular, which has been as we've said, our anticipation for the first quarter when we talked about this on our fourth quarter earnings call was that we had really strong pace going into our all-inclusive regions in Mexico and the Caribbean, and you know, business being somewhat flattish, but continuing to you know, not get worse than that, but be strong and our corporate customers really saying you know, they wanna travel, they wanna continue to travel. It's just that that's the one customer segment where we don't have as much visibility because of the booking windows. Group remains healthy.
Core business remains very, I think encouraging, and we saw the first couple of months of this year continuing on that, on that path with respect to all the customer segments. Now, the events. The war in Israel and the, you know, impact to the Middle East, we reported, you know, well, first off, from a guest and customer safety and well-being, we spent, you know, the first couple of weeks since the war started making sure that everybody was safe and that their well-being was taken care of.
We had an actual, you know, fully occupied hotels in the region because for that reason, for what we have to do in the communities that we operate, and we've got very tenured folks managing these hotels who know exactly the playbook that you need to follow when there's this kind of events happening in their community and in their country and region. That was what we saw. It's a very fluid situation. We have seen occupancy levels go down as people have, you know, whether they were traveling outside of the country and getting to their homes and obviously less travel inbound. Now, it's about, on an annual basis, our fee revenue from this part of the world is less than 5%.
Impact to the business, you know, from a macro perspective is not as significant, but it's a big travel hub. We're watching that and we'll see the duration.
Yeah.
There's been different messages that have been shared about that and speculation, so we don't know yet. We'll stay very close to it and monitor the situation, and our teams on the ground will continue to do what they know they need to do to take care of any guests and obviously our colleagues in the region. Just a point on Mexico.
Right.
After what had happened in Puerto Vallarta, that was like now three weeks ago, I think, we did see actually some impact and some cancellations happening right away. I think there was a little bit of anxiety around traveling to that region, Mexico in particular. We've seen that. That was a quick impact and a short term from a window perspective, and we've seen that plateau. Recently, in recent days, we've seen actually bookings come back up.
The other point I would raise about the region is that when people have made their commitment to travel there, when rebooking or changing, we have a lot of resorts and in a lot of locations in the region, in Mexico and the Caribbean and in the U.S. where people are rebooking. We're seeing that behavior taking place. There's offsets as people are, you know, committed to their spring break vacation in the month of March, in particular, and as they look forward. Again, the safety and well-being has been the focus at the beginning, taking care of our guests to, you know, make sure that their vacation plans get taken care of. I think we're seeing things now improve from a booking pickup perspective.
Mm-hmm.
It'll take some time. Again, that'll be something that we update all of you on our first quarter earnings call as far as impact.
Yeah. I think generally the quarter's played out differently than we expected, in terms of where business is coming from and going to, but the overall, you know.
Shape of the quarter is not too terribly dissimilar to what we talked about on the last call. We'll, you know, see how the next 15 days go and then like Joan said have more to share about the rest of the year in a couple of weeks.
I mean, we've talked a lot about the negatives, but some of those kind of near-term bright spots, obviously, you mentioned you've seen rebookings within the system. What are the other kind of areas where you've seen maybe things, you know, trend a little bit better than you maybe originally anticipated?
The U.S. looks solid. I think, you know, when we were thinking about the shape of the year, during our last call, you know, recognizing that the first quarter last year for both the U.S. and globally was our strongest quarter of the year, especially from a RevPAR standpoint, there was sort of an expectation that, given the tougher comp, Q1 would probably be the more difficult quarter for the U.S., especially knowing some of the bigger events taking place this summer. I think you obviously see the STR data, U.S. performance, especially within luxury and upper upscale, where we have a lot of exposure has been solid. I think that's helped offset some of the near term, you know, headwinds that we've seen.
Then when you go to other parts of the world, especially Asia, performance has been very good, and Europe continues to be a bright spot. I mean, Europe's been incredible just given how strong, you know, performance has been for the last couple of years. It's the benefit of obviously being globally-
Right
...diversified both across location and chain scale. Yeah, we'll see where the year goes.
As you think about kind of the segments, the group, right? Business Transient, Leisure, and you know, Leisure has been very strong for you. It sounds like it continues to be resilient. Are you seeing any kind of real evolution in terms of group versus, you know, Business Transient? And then on the Leisure side, you know, stimulus, is that something that has shown up? Are you anticipating it to show up and could that be impactful?
Maybe I'll just start on the consumer. We operate and serve the high-end consumer in each segment that we operate. That consumer has been very resilient and has said they intend to travel and spend a large part of their discretionary income on travel, and that's exactly what they've done. We've seen nothing that has impacted those numbers.
When you look at our results and you look at them by chain scale, you can see a very stark differentiation between luxury, upper upscale results and what we've seen, you know, on the upscale and upper mid-scale, which, you know, even those segments have been flattish, you know, to slightly up with our luxury and upper upscale growing, you know, in the mid-single digits and maybe even higher than that in some quarters. You know, it's definitely been a difference of consumer base even for us, but two-thirds of our existing rooms are in the upper upscale and luxury. That has led to higher RevPARs and higher growth rates for us consistently for basically a decade.
We continue to outperform, and that is because of the guest base that we have and the health of that consumer. And then on the Business Transient side and group side, we again are serving high corporates, you know, the top 10 consulting companies, and other, you know, highly prolific travelers from a corporate spend perspective. They are also. I mentioned group earlier that is healthy. This is because of that also that corporate customer base that we have that is bringing people together, seeing the value of, you know, groups coming together and we're realizing those benefits.
Yeah. Yeah. The other thing as you really think about Hyatt and how we differentiate ourselves is the all-inclusive portfolio that we have really, we feel is a great indicator of the health of the luxury Leisure customer. Whether you look at the performance of our net package RevPAR in 2025 or the pace that we talked about heading into the year, really a strong, resilient segment for us that's outperformed even the sort of traditional luxury segments that we serve. I think there's good proof points that the luxury customer, the higher income demographic customer, is prioritizing travel the way that they have been for really the last five years and probably even before that.
Our positioning really sets us up in a way that's differentiated, that allows us to have a lot of success.
Can we move a little bit to the development side, your 6%-7% unit growth? I mean, I guess you know, you're a big player, but not the biggest, so you're growing at this elevated pace. I mean, how sustainable is that? To what extent do you feel like you have a differentiated unit growth strategy than some of your peers?
Well, let me start first on what we've accomplished over the course of the transformation that we've made, where we've, you know, realized proceeds from assets that we've sold and reinvested. Over that course of that time between inorganic and organic growth, we have, and keep me honest here, Adam, we have doubled to almost tripled the size of our luxury portfolio. Our resort portfolio has tripled. Our lifestyle portfolio has grown by 5x . We have actually grown in segments that our existing customer base is wanting to travel to. We've been very intentional about that growth strategy. We've looked towards those markets and segments like all-inclusive as part of that resort growth that we've had.
We've built a distribution that is very attractive to our existing World of Hyatt members, who are really important to us, obviously, and have brought in new members into our program, into our loyalty program. In growing in that intentional way and looking at the acquisitions that we've made in that way that we can actually create a more effective network effect, that has made us even more attractive to developers and owners because they see that our membership base is so highly qualified and that joining our system actually will enable better performance for them for their hotel. Our conversions have been very successful because of that, because developers have been drawn to the portfolio and to the customer base.
That has helped us as we've grown over the last 10 years to be even a more attractive place for developers to convert into. Maybe Adam, you wanna cover the upper-midscale-
Yeah
...the growth there.
Yeah. I think 'cause we get a lot of questions about, well, you're positioned towards a high-end customer. 70% of your rooms are luxury, upper upscale, so why upper mid-scale? The answer is we're going where our customer is going when they're not staying with us. We did a lot of research on customer spend behavior a couple of years ago and found that in, I think it's three-quarters of the instances where our members were not staying with us, and they were staying in locations where we didn't have a hotel within five miles.
The reason we didn't have a hotel in most of those locations was because we didn't have a brand that could be built that could be supported by the price point of that market. If you think about going into a secondary or tertiary market, a Hyatt Place might not be able to deliver the returns for an owner that an upper mid-scale brand could. We launched Hyatt Studios, which is our extended stay upper mid-scale brand in 2023. Last year, we launched Hyatt Select, which is our transient upper mid-scale brand. Really finding a way to engage with our customer base and our members in a deeper way, also meeting new members along the way, which just gives us that much more ability to grow in a way that positions us for the future.
Where we have so much domestic white space really is in these secondary and tertiary markets. If you think about a business traveler who might stay at the Park Hyatt in New York when they're there for a meeting, they may also be going to, you know, a secondary market to visit a store or a factory. It's not that they don't wanna stay with us, it's that they don't have a location to stay with us, and they will now in the future.
As you sort of think about our brand portfolio, it's really one customer with a lot of different purposes of visits, whether it's a luxury stay that's personal, you're going with your spouse or your partner, versus an all-inclusive vacation where you're taking your family or maybe a fun getaway for a lifestyle opportunity, a Hyatt Regency or Grand Hyatt for a group meeting like this, or going to a Hyatt Select to stay while you're traveling for business. It's making sure that we've got brands and purpose of visit for every stay occasion.
I think at both dimensions, we are really, really excited about the future opportunity for our continued growth. We have a couple of slides in our investor presentation that we post every quarter that shows the opportunity that we have because of our lack of penetration and distribution in many markets around the world. Yet when you look at the top markets, you know, hospitality markets, travel markets, we're in every single one of those. It's just about the depth of our penetration. The opportunity for us to grow across all the segments is really compelling.
You've targeted a 90% asset-light mix. We're not quite there today. Are we getting there organically? You know, to what extent is there appetite to do another, you know, a Playa-esque deal, you know, comes across your desk? You know, I guess with what degree of confidence can we underwrite getting that 90% within a couple of years? Is this where you continue to be opportunistic to the extent there is something like that out there?
Okay, let me unpack that because I think the first piece on the 90%, we have confidence that we are going to achieve that this year with our results this year. That is, you know, as you mentioned, Dan, it is organic. It is as we grow our fee-based business, which, you know, last year grew at a 9% rate, very strong on the core business front. Our range for this year, you'll have to remind me, Adam, is between six-
6% and 8%? I'm looking at Ryan. It's very, very solid.
Strong fee-based growth this year as well, and that is what we'll add to and get us to the 90%. 8%-11%.
8%-11%. Thank you.
Thank you, Ryan. That is what will lead us to the 90%. Now, another sell-down is something we get asked. We are not making a formal commitment, but we have been, you know, very clear that we continue to sell assets. We expect to sell into strength. We've realized great returns from the assets that we've sold, the $5.6 billion that we've sold over the last eight years at a 15x multiple. We will continue to sell into strength and, you know, take advantage of opportunities to develop strategic relationships with potential buyers.
That is a focus of ours, and that will continue to, you know, increase that mix over time as that is appropriate as we look at the strategy, the disposition strategy that we have going forward. With respect to your question about Playa, we, as we think about capital allocation and we think about the growth of the company and all the opportunities that Adam and I just went through as far as how we grow, this is a focus of ours. We want to continue to grow. We want to continue to invest in growth. We do not anticipate anything of any material size, but there are opportunities, portfolios.
It's a global fragmented market still, and we still have, for the reasons we described about our customer base and our existing footprint and our opportunities to the fact that we're not overly penetrated in markets. For all of those reasons, we have great opportunities to continue to invest in growth, and that will be the priority. It will be asset-light growth. Playa- [crosstalk]
Asset-light in terms of buying and then selling, or asset-light at the onset?
That is the goal.
Yeah.
Playa was a really unique opportunity for us to really control and convert some contracts that we were already franchising, brands that we were franchising into management contracts. You know, knowing the space that we did, we had a fantastic execution last year by ending up with buying and selling the real estate. You know, that was quite unusual and not something we intend to do again.
Okay. Agreed. In terms of the distribution business, I mean, this has been. Well, let's take a step back. You've gone to great lengths and had pretty good success so far in terms of simplifying the business, you know, getting rid of some of the hairier stuff out there, the UVC stuff. Here we are, and it seems like that segment has been kind of the sore spot or the headache. I mean, how do you think about that business, the opportunity there, some of the interruptions, and, you know, how much of this is a one-off, and how should we think about the growth trajectory for that going forward?
We've always been very clear that when we acquired the business, we recognized fully, and I'm talking about the broader ALG business in 2021. This was one part of that. It's a business that existed within the entire platform. What it delivers to our all-inclusive business and our all-inclusive owners is a very strategic lever that we can use to actually drive business to our hotels. It is a distribution channel that they have the opportunity to tap into, and they're delivering 15% of the inventory from the U.S. consumer because they are the largest distribution channel driving business into Mexico and the Caribbean.
This is, you know, under our ownership, and there's great value to a very big part and important part of our Leisure presence, and our U.S. customer from this business. The important thing to know about the distribution, ALG Vacations, is that it also serves not just five-star, which is our properties in the Mexico and Caribbean market, but also the four-star properties. As most of you know, you know, the differential between the demographic and what we're seeing in demand in the different categories is different. About 50% of the customers that they serve are in each category, five-star or four-star and below.
When we see some pressure, this is the temporary pressure that we all believe will ease coming from that demographic of consumer that we're just seeing smaller or lower demand levels.
Mm-hmm.
That's the reality of the business, but it's highly strategic, actually provides us a lot of data about what the U.S. consumer, the Leisure consumer is doing and where they're going. There's multiple dimensions of strategic value that it provides to us. The one other thing that I'll mention is that we have talked, and we've talked publicly about the fact that we would be open to some sort of very strategic relationship potentially with this business, but that would have to be. It's a very careful consideration, and we would still want to preserve all of the strategic value that we've benefited from and our owners have benefited from.
You know, we'll keep you posted over time if there's something that looks that could be beneficial with respect to a partner that could help us amplify the impact that we're providing for the business and for our owners.
Yeah. The other thing I would add on this is, you're right. It's a piece of the business that
We get a lot of questions about. There's a focus on. Don't lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of our business has outperformed for the better part of a decade relative to others, whether it's having the highest RevPAR growth in nine out of the last 10 years, having industry-leading Net Rooms Growth for nine years in a row, the fact that our organic fees have grown close to 8% since 2017 since we started the transformation. Like, there is a story here about the quality of our fee business that I think sometimes gets missed because there's this hang-up on a very small but strategic piece of the business.
You know, I just would invite folks not to forget about the core business and how well it has performed and how well we think it can continue to perform given the way we've positioned ourselves.
Okay. Let's turn to kind of another ancillary but a bright spot, the credit card deal. You announced a credit card deal late last year. I think more recently you announced a new credit card with that program, a higher-
Yeah.
Oh, I saw it on a forum.
No, don't believe what you read on the forums. Nothing has been announced yet.
I guess what are the levers there as you think about upside over time in terms of the credit cards, bearing in mind you gave numbers and they're out there, but what are kind of the variable pieces as we think about kind of the growth rate?
Yeah. I think the two most important pieces are having a really strong customer and consumer base that spends on the card, which we know we have, as well as making both the loyalty program and the benefits of the card attractive to have more card members over time. I think those are the two pieces where we believe we have the ability to deliver and you know have results that are in line with what we've talked about previously and maybe even better as we go forward. Then when you think about different opportunities that are out there, you alluded to you know the fact that we don't have a premium credit card.
I think that's certainly something that our customer base would find really attractive, so that could be a way to add to how we think about the upside opportunity going forward. Obviously, there's the ability to add more card product in other locations besides the United States that we don't currently have. Those are all great opportunities that we have, but ultimately it really does start with having great brands, having a wonderful loyalty program that offers great benefits to our members and to prospective members. If you do those two things really well, it will attract more members to the program as well as more consumers that are interested in signing up for the card, which benefits us over time. We really try to think about these pieces holistically and not one by one.
If we pivot to AI, right? That's obviously been incredibly topical, and I'm sure you guys have a lot to say there. I guess as we sit here today versus three months ago versus a year ago, what has been the areas of greatest surprise and what most excites you about this opportunity, you know, whether it's the distribution side, or even something, you know, internally for the cost stuff?
It wholly excites us, and we've been working on it. I would say we've been working on it for years actually, and it starts with being a company that's focused on data insights and that driving decision-making. In order to do that, you have to have great data, and you have to invest in your data and have structures that enable your teams for a global large company to be able to, you know, tap into that resource. Now, two years ago, Mark mentioned this actually, that we've been working on it for two years, and he's been leading it. Mark, our CEO, has been leading this effort on our capabilities with respect to AI across the company.
What we did is, at this time, we looked at all of our opportunities, and there was dozens and dozens, and we focused on a few that were revenue-generating because we said, "This is gonna have the biggest impact to the business, and it's the best place for us to really focus." Because we have this great platform with respect to our data and our structures, we could go fast, and we had to just build our capabilities internally and, you know, gather the high talent scientists, engineers, all of that in-house to start experimenting and using practices to develop where that most and greatest opportunities are. You mentioned distribution. For sure it's in distribution. We just launched an app within ChatGPT.
If you go into your ChatGPT app, you can go and download the Hyatt app, and you can use that generative technology that most people are familiar with and actually search in the way that you're comfortable searching for your next trip with Hyatt. Oftentimes it's for Leisure, but could be for any purpose of visit, and we're one of the first hotel companies that have done this. We're pushing forward, we're focusing, and we are finding opportunities to be more efficient, and a lot of that is powered by different types of AI application to invest in the technology that's going to help our hotels and increase their performance.
This comes from engaging in the way that people and our guests want to engage, delivering higher conversion at a lower cost to our owners, and the flywheel can accelerate from that type of investment and that type of focus. What I would say is I provided one example, but there's multiple examples that we're working on, and this is where, you know, to a large degree, our focus is giving us an advantage, but also our size is giving us an advantage because we can do this quickly, and we've proven that. We'll continue to do that, and some of these, the realization of some of these benefits are quite competitive, so we don't want to share all of them.
Over time, as we see all of them have an ROI, and we will be sharing that with you over time.
Okay. One last one before we open it up to the floor. Asset sales, you know, that's been. You sold, you know, billions of dollars of assets over time. I think there's still $5.6 billion. To be specific. What's the multiple? 15x. There you go. Come on, you don't have it memorized yet? No, I know. That's why I was teeing you guys up. I guess where do we sit today in terms of that asset transformation? Not the 90%, but more kind of like, what's, what still do you have left to sell? Is it, is it U.S. stuff? Is it international? Kinda how are you thinking about the assets still left to go, so to speak?
Yeah. I mentioned earlier that we have to. In order to realize those values that we just described, we've had to be very strategic about how we look at the actual products itself, the assets we have, and selling into strength, whether that's that market or that demand profile. There's certainly opportunities for us to turn to. We do have a lot of luxury high cachet assets in our own portfolio, so those create really unique opportunities for us to engage with strategic buyers that maybe we could do something even bigger with potentially. So if a buyer were interested in an asset and they had a portfolio of luxury assets, potentially it could be even a bigger relationship.
I think that's how we are approaching it because we recognize that we've invested in these assets. They're very high quality, high performing, so we will take a very thoughtful approach to make sure we're maximizing shareholder value. Of course, those proceeds would be-
Buybacks.
Well, it would be prioritized into growth opportunities, but excess cash would definitely be a buyback opportunity.
Great. We'll open it up to the floor for questions.