Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining bright and early. I know everybody here got a great night of sleep and went to bed very early. We're thrilled to have Marriott management team here. We have CEO Tony Capuano, and then Drew Pinto, EVP and Chief Revenue and Technology Officer. I'll lead it off with questions. This is a fireside. We'll leave some time at the end for Q&A. You know, I think, I'm excited for a very thorough and informative discussion.
Me too. Thanks for having us.
Let's just start high level.
Sure
strategic priorities. Where would you say Marriott's top priorities are for 2026? Is there a difference in how you think about the priorities for the U.S. versus internationally?
Yeah, not really. I mean, the US is a bit more mature market, but I think broadly, the priorities are similar. I would say number one, you know, we're trying to build this ecosystem, right? That has little to no leakage. And Bonvoy is the connective tissue for that ecosystem. So that starts with make sure we have the best brands and experiences on a global basis. That's about accelerating net unit growth. The notion being, if we have the right product everywhere our members wanna go, everywhere in the world for every trip purpose, then they really don't feel the need to look outside that ecosystem. So that's a big part of it. And then I think technology, which is part of the reason I'm so happy that Drew's here, and I really sort of think about that through two lenses.
As we've talked about in the past, we're in the midst of a massive replatforming of our three most important technology systems, property management systems, central reservations, and loyalty. That should be pretty transformational, and Drew can give you some details on that. Also all the emerging technologies, AI, for anybody that bet the under that AI would be said in the first two minutes, you lost. You know, how that can impact certainly our above property efficiency, but also some of the processes at the hotel level that have historically been manual and can be made more efficient.
As we kind of zoom in a little bit more on the fundamentals, right.
Mm-hmm
you know, I guess, can you give us an update on current or year-to-date RevPAR trends? Obviously, given the volatility or turmoil in the Middle East.
Yeah
What are you seeing there, and how do you think about the impact to the region?
Sure. Maybe not dissimilar to last year. January and February, really strong start on a global basis, ahead of our expectations for those two first months of the year, both in terms of absolute demand and ADR growth. March, obviously, you're seeing the impact of the conflict in the Middle East. For the most part, today, the impact of the conflict seems largely limited to the region. We've seen cancellations, as you would expect. You obviously have had significant disruption in airline capacity, and that's impactful. To date, we've not really seen it ripple out beyond the Middle East.
Just to ground you, if you look at our global inventory today, about 4% of our global rooms are in the Middle East, about 7% of our pipeline, and about 4% of our global fees come out of the region. We're 15, 16 days into the conflict, and so I'm talking to the teams every day, and we're watching closely to get a sense of. You know, we actually, interestingly, in markets like the UAE, you had very high occupancy at the start of the conflict because of the inability of folks to get commercial flights out of the region. But we're running pretty weak occupancies right now. Obviously from a human perspective but also a business perspective, hoping for a swift and peaceful resolution.
How do you think about the impact to other regions, you know, or kind of the knock-on here, whether it's Europe or outbound US into Europe or into the Middle East?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we look at forward bookings. You are seeing some weakness and some cancellations into the Middle East. Europe is holding up fine today. If the conflict expands, there's obviously real risk. I think the bigger question is around oil prices and the ripple effect that has on commercial flight pricing and how that might impact. You know, we've seen spikes in oil prices over our 99-year history. Sometimes that translates in, particularly for the US outbound market. Maybe they choose more drive to destinations than fly to destinations, but we're obviously well distributed in drive to destinations as well.
One of the bright spots for 2026 is World Cup.
Mm-hmm.
You've given some parameters around that, but I guess, what are your latest assumptions? How much business is on the books? What are you seeing and maybe how are you yielding the hotels?
Yeah
to maximize profit?
It's still early. I mean, we continue to think there's probably about 40 basis points of upside on a global basis, or excuse me, on a U.S. basis, about 35 on a global basis. It's early. The bookings are about where we would expect, given that many of the future rounds, nobody knows who's gonna be playing in those matches. International inbound, normal course, we see about 10%-12% inbound international. About 24% or double of the bookings we've seen for World Cup are inbound international, which I think is a pretty encouraging sign.
Do you have any data points or anecdotes on, you know, people that are coming into these 11 or so cities in the U.S., or even 16 in North America? You know, they're extending their trip, and they're traveling to, you know, these other areas, or they're staying X amount of days.
Yeah, it's a little too early. I mean, I think we have some expectation that that'll be the case. Again, when you look at what we saw in Qatar and prior World Cup host cities, a lot of it depends on who advances.
Mm-hmm.
Right? Sometimes you have folks that book a one-way ticket in with the hope that their team is gonna advance, and they're gonna extend their stay.
If you think about the macro.
Mm-hmm
the consumer health, how are you monitoring kind of the week-to-week, month-to-month?
Sure
State of the consumer, and how do you think about that high end where you certainly have a big presence versus kind of the low end where over time, you know, you'll probably have more growth?
I'd say a couple things. I think number one, we look at all the same metrics that all of your audience does. We look closely at GDP. We look at employment numbers. We look at corporate earnings, all good indicators about how the consumer confidence trends are evolving. I think we're feeling pretty optimistic, you know, set aside if you assume that the conflict remains relatively concentrated in one geography, we look into the coming months, and we say, with tariff relief, as tax refunds start to roll in, we think that that'll be a boost to U.S. consumer confidence that could be great news for our business. On the luxury end, it's probably been the most fun story to tell for the last number of quarters on our earnings call.
There have been, understandably, lots of questions about the resilience of that luxury consumer, but we continue to see really strong demand and really strong pricing power, which for us, given that we've got such a large portfolio and pipeline globally, is really encouraging.
As you think about your brands, right?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I don't know the exact number. Let's call it.
Me neither.
...thirty-ish.
I think it's about 40.
Forty-ish?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Depending on how you count them.
How do you think about that level expanding or contracting over time? Are there brands that need more work, brands where-
Yeah
You're very happy with?
Yeah. I love the breadth of our brand portfolio. I love the breadth of choice that offers both to our guests and Bonvoy members and also the breadth of choice it offers to our owner and franchise community. If your strategy contemplates that broad and diverse of a brand portfolio, the requirement that comes along with that is that you ensure you have a well-articulated, distinct positioning for each of the brands in the portfolio. I you know one of the guiding principles at Marriott is this idea that success is never final, so there's always still more work to be done. I think we've achieved that with the vast majority of the brands.
That well-articulated and distinct positioning is more clear in some brands than others, and we continue to try to ensure that we've got that across the portfolio.
In terms of the unit growth and on the development side, you're guiding to 4%-4.5% room-
Four and a half to five.
Sorry, 4.5-5. Yes.
Jackie almost got out of her chair.
Misread my notes here. With the conversions, obviously.
Yeah
That's a big driver. What are the biggest opportunities and risks to sustaining this pace, especially in this kinda touch-and-go financing and development environment?
Yeah, I mean, you know, we've got a pipeline of over 600,000 rooms, good mix between new build and conversions. We've seen over the last number of quarters pretty consistently both signings and openings, 30%-40% conversions. The new builds that will open this year obviously are well under construction, and we've got great visibility into the status and the projected opening dates of those new builds. On the conversion side, the piece I feel like maybe we don't talk about enough, of course, we're out there every day, our transactors around the world chasing individual hotel conversions, whether those be conversions of independent hotels or conversions of competitive brands, and we'll continue to do that, and that'll continue to be a really strong source of growth for us.
The focus we have and the resources we have dedicated to portfolio conversions, obviously MGM is a terrific example of that. We launched a platform called Series by Marriott, which gives us the ability to bring in, mid-scale and upscale portfolios into the system. We announced a deal, last year, with a group in India called Fern, which in a single transaction, I think we got something on the order of 8,000 rooms. Not an M&A deal, not an acquisition, but a portfolio conversion, and I think that will continue to be a really important focus area for us.
How do you think about, you know, those bigger kinda portfolio-type deals and ensuring you get, you know, those economics? Because I think that we all like the unit growth.
Yeah, of course.
We all like the visibility, but we also want to make sure that.
Yeah
There's corresponding economics as well.
Yeah. You should reasonably expect that the vast majority of conversions we do, whether they are single unit conversions or portfolio conversions, the fee structure on those will be very typical, very traditional. MGM was unusual, but in effect, you brought together the world's biggest lodging company and the world's biggest gaming company. Both parties felt they brought a lot to that relationship, and that required some creativity around the deal structure. The vast majority of our conversion deals will be very typical fee structures.
Okay. In terms of the entire pipeline, can you talk about the chain scale and the-
Of course.
geographic mix and
Yeah
You know, what you're most excited about?
Had you not asked that, I would have volunteered it anyway because I think it's a great part of our growth story. Roughly 40% of that 600,000-room pipeline is in upper upscale and luxury, which are obviously the tiers that generate the most significant and premium fees. That's a great part of the story. The other piece that I think bears watching is our entry into midscale, which is only a couple years old. It's only, I think, about 5% of the pipeline today, but those platforms are among the most rapidly growing platforms.
When you think about this bifurcation of the consumer that we've seen, the ability to accommodate lower income households who still have an appetite for travel, but in a more economical way through our growth in midscale, and to accommodate that high income household with our industry-leading luxury portfolio, I think is a pretty powerful combination.
If we fast-forward five or ten years down the line, how do you think about your chain scale in this, you know, in terms of, you know, midscale, upper midscale versus luxury?
Yeah, I mean, I don't necessarily think of them as mutually exclusive. In other forums, I've gotten a question around, "So have you sort of pulled back on your growth in upper upscale and luxury in support of midscale?" Absolutely not. It's not a binary decision. We're pushing hard because we've got a long, long runway for growth in midscale. We continue, we had one of our committee meetings this morning and approved three new U.S. luxury deals. We are pushing very hard to try to extend that lead in luxury.
Okay. If we talk about, you know, your owners and franchisees, you know, I think that there's growing frustration and, you know, it's a very tough environment operationally.
Yeah.
How are you working with them to lower their costs and continue to offer a compelling value proposition?
Yeah. It's one of the biggest focus areas in the company today. I did the ALIS Investment Conference in L.A. a few weeks ago, and I was on the CEO panel. My friend, Elie Maalouf from IHG, made, I thought, a very insightful observation. He said, "These asset-light models are great as long as you have a willing asset-heavy partner on the other side of the equation." The health and the financial strength of our owner and franchise community is of paramount importance. How are we trying to help them? We're looking at every variable in the equation that drives their returns. You can talk to Drew a little bit. Part of his day job is revenue generation, but we're doing everything we can to try to aggressively grow top line.
We're looking at every expense line in the P&L and looking for opportunities to find efficiencies, whether that's efficiencies embedded in rethinking how we operate our hotels or whether those are efficiencies as a result of emerging technologies and AI. We're looking to try to improve operating margins. We're looking at our affiliation costs. Are there opportunities as we become more and more efficient at the above property level to pass some of those efficiencies on to our owners? Last year, we meaningfully lowered the charge out rate for Bonvoy, which was a big boost for our owners. We'll continue to look at each of those variables.
I guess that's a good segue to the next question in terms of the Bonvoy and-
Mm-hmm.
-the charge out and the relationship with owners there. You know, your 35% increase in credit card fees, that was a big driver of your 2020 to 2026 guidance and the growth there. Can you, I guess, walk us through the process and rationale behind that royalty rate increase?
Sure.
how you see the economics of the co-branded program evolving over the next few years?
Yeah. I mean, the big drivers were multi-pronged. Number one, we had an existing relationship, contractual relationship that put some limitations on us, and we renegotiated that relationship in a way that gave us some flexibility. The single biggest driver is the efficiencies we continue to drive. You know, we went through a pretty significant review of our above property costs that resulted in approaching $100 million in net admin savings that created. Then the third prong is really the continued growth in the system, growth in the credit card programs, growth in spend by the credit card holders. You throw all of that in the blender together, and it gave us the opportunity to make this change.
I would share with you that as we contemplated that change, there were a number of gating factors that we considered. We wanted to ensure that the credit card, or excuse me, the Bonvoy program itself, its financial health and stability remained as strong as ever. In point of fact, it's as strong as it's ever been. Number two, we wanted to make sure if we made this change, we did not meaningfully dilute the value proposition to the Bonvoy members, and in fact, we are not. Third, we wanted to make sure we wouldn't have done it if it had resulted in a massive increase in the charge out rate to our owners and franchisees. In point of fact, as I mentioned, we had actually reduced that charge out rate.
It's really the growth of the system broadly that allows us to make that modification.
Have you gotten feedback from owners post that? And maybe what has that-
Yeah.
sounded like?
I would say. You know, they ask essentially the same three questions around the same three categories that I said. They wanted to understand why. They wanted to understand how it would impact them. Would this result in an increase in the charge out rate? They care deeply about Bonvoy and what a powerful driver of demand that is for their hotels. Would this somehow destabilize the program in terms of its economic foundation? We assured them it would not. They said, you know, if you look at what the loyalty bloggers put out there, the value proposition for members for Bonvoy is very compelling. They wanted to make sure we weren't gonna materially dilute that value proposition.
Not to get into the mechanics, which I
Sure
Is there an additional step-up opportunity as far as, you know, where you are today versus where you could go? Just to confirm-
Yeah
My understanding at least, this is completely separate from the, you know, interchange negotiation that you have.
Yeah
... have with.
Yeah. We're very comfortable where we landed, and we're comfortable because it hits those three gating factors. It is separate and distinct from the ongoing negotiations we have with our credit card partners.
Okay. Maybe we can turn to AI.
Sure.
We hit the war.
Yeah
a little bit. For Drew,
Good morning.
Obviously, Tony, you know, feel free to
Yeah
Feel free to comment as well. How do you think about generative AI fundamentally changing the guest journey and experience, and then Marriott's competitive positioning over the next 3-5 years within this segment?
First of all, thank you very much for having me, and you know, excited to talk to you about our plans here. I would say overall, we see it as a really great opportunity for us. As you're experiencing in your own personal life and use of the AI tools that are out there, I think it's really reinventing commerce, and in a good way for customers. Number one, it's much easier to find the breadth of products that a company may offer. Certainly, as Tony was just mentioning, we have a breadth of our portfolio, both hotel products, but also experiences that go along with that. To be able to discover that in an easier way is very valuable to the customer.
The other thing too, which I have also been enjoying personally as I use these tools, is that it also can tailor not only, "Here's all the selection in the market," but, "Here are the things that are right for you based on what you're looking for." We see it as a good opportunity, and we feel really confident about our position to be uniquely qualified to take advantage of it, given our scale, given the loyalty program that we have, the strength of our direct channels, and also not to be forgotten, the strength of our partnerships across the ecosystem.
Given our scale, given how active we've been on the distribution side, how deep of relationships we have with these partners, we're able to work with them in a way that I think few others can because of the relationships we've built over time, so we can really innovate together.
If we can hit first on the distribution side.
Sure.
I mean, what programs have you started to pilot so far? Where have you seen success? You know, what could we see roll out in terms of the customer experience, you know, in the next kinda three to six months?
If it's okay, let me give it a little broader context, and then we'll go to that specific question. 'Cause it's important to see, as Tony mentioned, we're doing a full digital and technology transformation of our company, so it goes way beyond AI. You know, everything from our core systems to our data platform to re-platforming our digital site, that all comes as part of this to really create a great experience. I would also say, too, in our AI efforts right now, we started out doing pilots and, you know, proofs of concept. We have a GenAI Studio that we stood up a couple years ago.
That was successful, what we really needed to move to was scaling, and that's what we've been doing over the past nine months, is building all the things underneath that aren't that exciting but are critical in order to scale at the size and the fidelity that we have to have as a company. We've been building that out, and we have use cases on the customer side. We have use cases for our associates to really make their lives easier so they can spend more time with the guests, and use cases for our owners and franchisees. Give you an example, we're working on giving them better insights about their top-line productivity, right, and their top-line opportunities so that they can drive RevPAR in their hotels.
AI starts to unlock this along with all the other things that we're doing. To give you some specifics, a couple things that you can see. Number one is that we wanna make sure our direct channels are strong and relevant and that the customer loves coming to us. That's always our number one point in our distribution strategy. One of the things you'll see coming out that will be very visible will be natural language search on marriott.com and on our app. We're working on that now. We're gonna be shooting to get that out in pilot in the next couple months, and then by mid-year to have it more fully rolled out. We're very excited about that.
That also then enables us to do the next thing, which is we're gonna really increase the ability for the guest and the hotel to correspond with each other before arrival. We've had chat through our app while you're in your stay for a long time. We're gonna improve that, but we're also now, with the new technology, be able to extend that. Pretty much across your entire journey, you can have that connection with the hotel. Those are just a couple examples of the things that we're working on, and I think those are just the beginning of what these underlying efforts that we're going through are gonna enable us to do.
As you think about your relationship with you know, OpenAI, the Geminis of the world, where do you see that evolving over time? And bearing in mind it's obviously fluid, things are moving very quickly. As you think about kinda preempting what happened 20+ years ago-
Yeah
with the OTAs, and you're looking at this opportunity set, how do you kind of envision it evolving? What would be your best case or dream scenario?
Yeah, it's too soon to tell, which is exactly why we're doing what we're doing. I think you touched on it perfectly. I think as an industry, we can only speak for ourselves, but, you know, I spend a lot of time in the distribution space. As an industry, I think we all recognize that we sat on the sidelines for too long when this whole paradigm got defined about 20 years ago or so. As you're seeing across the industry, that's different this time. We're really involved with OpenAI and Google for a couple reasons. Number one, this is all exploration. We're trying to learn, they're trying to learn, it's all developing. That's why it's too soon to really say where is this all gonna land.
What we wanna make sure is that we were in there and learning along the journey. Second thing, and probably even more importantly, is influence. We wanna be able to be influencing this model to make sure that it adheres to our distribution standards, that it helps our owners and franchisees have a customer acquisition, strategy and approach that's gonna work for them, it's gonna be sustainable. Just to make sure that there's good competition there and that it's really, gonna be a place where we can benefit on behalf of our hotels. That's why we're in early and really trying to figure it out as we go. Literally, I get an update each week from the team, and there's a new, like, merchandising idea that we might do with Google as part of this pilot, for example.
It's really, like, in development as we speak today.
Bearing in mind it's still very early.
Yeah.
What are some of the kinda more successful e-endeavors so far? Or any metrics you could share in terms of just engagement or level of bookings or something along those lines?
It's really early. There's nothing specific we can share. I'll give you, though, the one place that we've had natural language search running for a little while has been our Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy site. This is one of those test cases we did, and we actually launched it about two years ago, almost today. Our original plan was to run that for a short period of time and then move to, you know, our bigger surfaces, marriott.com and our app. There was so much to discover and things were changing so quickly that we took our time a little bit to learn. It's been very interesting to see the behavior and kind of the results on that site.
I'll just give you kinda two general observations, but I think you'll find them interesting. Number one is my expectation is it's gonna take a little longer for customers to adopt than we expect. Because we've had this out there, and the number one search that the customers still do in the natural language search box is basically what we call rate, dates, and space. Like you know where you're going, you wanna go to these dates. It's the same inputs you put into the search bar today. I heard, I think it was Skift that coined the term the tyranny of the search box, right? We've all been living with this for so long that the behavior change is gonna take a little while. We've even done things like suggestive prompting on Homes & Villas.
Like, "Oh, here's the things you can ask it. You can discover homes like this." So that's number one, and I think, has been interesting. Probably number two, which has guided our development of what we're gonna launch even more so, is that when you open up the box for a customer to say, "Ask me what you'd like," you get a lot of questions that may have nothing to do with that specific, "Hey, I wanna find a certain hotel or a certain home." We get questions about, "What's my Bonvoy loyalty balance?" pet policies at different hotels, you name it. For us, it's very important that we build a really integrated, really great experience that's very rich, 'cause we want our customers to love this when they go there.
We wanna make sure that we can predict where they're gonna go and help them get the answers that they're looking for.
I guess putting it into financial terms, not hard and fast numbers obviously, 'cause it's so early.
Yeah.
Do you think about this as a, as a revenue maximization opportunity, as a margin opportunity? You know, it kinda puts you on a different plane for owners and resonating so it can grow units. How do you kinda think about it flowing through in terms of your actual operating performance?
I think probably the two primary metrics are gonna be, traffic and kinda stickiness of the site, either for our direct channels and of course with the partners that we're gonna be working with. I think there's a big conversion opportunity here. Don't know what that is yet, but just the fact that you're gonna be able to really find the hotel you're looking for or the experience you're looking for. Within that too is then ancillary kinda basket size. As you know, we're one of the biggest, restaurant, golf, spa operators in the world. We have all these great products. Our number one challenge has always been, in this very limited space, how do you expose that to customers in a relevant and very personalized way? That's all getting unlocked with what we're doing.
I think there's opportunity there as well.
Back to your question about owners, that's one of the things they're most intrigued by. You know, they tend to think about new technology platforms, emerging technologies as an opportunity to drive margins, and to be sure there are lots and lots of opportunities. What I hear from the owner community quite frequently, you think about the menu of products and services that we make available to our guests, the ability to incorporate those into the booking path at time of booking, I think represents really meaningful revenue upside.
Interesting. Then in terms of your on the cost side, or more I guess on the still on the, a little bit on the acquisition side.
Yep.
OpenAI, Google, you're working with them. How do you think about the economics of these channels evolving versus traditional search and OTAs?
Well, that's, again, too soon to tell, and probably the most fundamental question we have. That's why we're in there early, is to be part of that conversation. We need to ensure that the commercial model that's gonna come from this development and change in the paradigm is something that we can support and we can sustain and that our owners and franchisees can sustain. You know, they are very vocal, and rightfully so, and we're in partnership with them to make sure that the customer acquisition model and retention model in our industry is something that can be supported and is profitable. That is what we wake up thinking about every single day. Whether it's technology, AI, marketing, it all comes back to that. We need to make sure that we're healthy and growing in a way that can be sustained.
You've been investing a lot in technology for the past few years. Now we're starting to see, I think, some of the impact and benefits of that, at least on the cost side.
Mm-hmm.
I think your G&A was up, you know, a couple% or should be up a couple% this year. It didn't grow much last year. I guess how much of this efficiency is sustainable? Do you feel like there's more opportunity ahead in terms of, you know, this focus on the corporate and the cost side?
I definitely think there's opportunity, because a lot of the investment we're making. Again, we're scaling, so we're trying to make things broad-based so that it could be used in a variety of places. While we may not have a use case in a certain area at this point, we're building the underlying infrastructure so that it can be leveraged. I do think that there are opportunities for us to keep rolling out, whether it's AI or broader technology to help either automate things or take manual processes or data and make that more efficient. I do think that there's some opportunity in front of us.
Probably the bigger thing I'm seeing, which is encouraging, is while we're working on these big projects and scaling them within our AI group, the trend that I'm seeing even more so is AI is now permeating everything we do. Projects that, you know, we were gonna make investments in that maybe didn't have an AI component that we never thought would be AI relevant, now suddenly it's almost a requirement by us that it within there are AI solutions and that we're designing for that as part of it. It's not the full story. Anything we do, whether it's finance or HR or marketing or anything, that we're saying, "Where is the AI portion of this solution," so that we can feel comfortable that we're making the right investment.
Interesting. It sounds like it's fully embedded in every day-to-day decision almost operationally.
It is, and the speed at which it's moving. I mean, everyone knows outside of just our company how fast this whole space is moving. Even within our company, we're just moving so quickly to pivot, and we've built optionality in here so that we can emphasize the places that we think are gonna get the best return. That seems to be right now the place that's even more promising than, say, one specific capability that we're gonna launch.
You've been re-platforming your core tech systems.
Mm-hmm
Right? I mean, are there limitations on leveraging AI given, you know, where you are in that process? Or do you feel like you're kind of at the tail end, and now you can go on offense so, you know, so to speak?
Now, admittedly, when we started the design of that big transformation, AI wasn't what it is today. The good news is that we built our architecture in a way, though, that's very flexible and easy to scale and also to adapt. Bringing AI in is almost a nice additive component that helps amplify what we were doing. We feel really good about that. The other thing that it's doing is that it's opening up a whole source of data that we didn't have before. Things like property data or customer data. It used to be limited to us to be able to do the things we wanted to do because of these very localized old systems.
That's now unlocking all this opportunity to then apply AI to that to help those constituents that we mentioned, which we didn't have before. If anything, this has been really good foundational work that opens up capabilities that we didn't think were possible before.
Did we miss anything on AI that you feel like is, you know, we're overlooking and it feels like it evolves so quickly, so when we wrote the questions two weeks ago?
Yeah. No, I don't think so. I think my biggest perspective on this is that it's becoming more and more of a critical component within a broader strategy, whether that's technology strategy or what Tony and I have really been trying to do is not just talk about technology for technology's sake, but how does it apply to driving the results of the business, whether they're commercial results or the other KPIs we have. We're doing it for a purpose, and so we're making sure the investments and the effort goes towards that purpose. We're now plugging AI into that instead of it being this discrete thing that stands on its own.
I think that's really important because you can get enamored with a certain AI solution and think, "Okay, this is gonna solve everything." What we're learning is it has to be really integrated-
Mm-hmm
Whether it's data or security or, you know, the customers, like I said at the beginning, is not gonna stay in one lane, and they're gonna wanna know that you've thought this through and thought their experience through. That's really where we've been focused.
Got it. All right.
The only thing I might add, it's sort of piggybacking on Drew's comment. There's all sorts of opportunity in distribution, above property, lots of opportunity for margin efficiency, on property opportunity for margin efficiency. We probably don't talk enough about the guest-facing opportunity, and that's about using these emerging technologies to create capacity for our associates.
Mm-hmm.
Right? We are in the human connection business, and if this technology creates capacity for them to better engage our guests, I think that's a huge win for us.
Yeah. You know, if they're feeling it on the site, so.
Exactly.
We'll go back to Tony, actually. As it relates kind of a little bit to AI.
Yeah
more kind of broadly. I mean, Marriott's historically grown both organically-
Mm-hmm
as well as acquisitions. I mean, with the stock trading where it is and the multiple that, you know, investors are ascribing it, how do you think about M&A at this juncture for the company? To the extent that we've just spent a lot of time talking about AI.
Yeah
the benefits on the cost side, does that start to come into the equation at some point as you think about the M&A opportunity?
Yeah, I don't think the technology landscape necessarily changes our core philosophy in terms of how we think about M&A. On the long list of benefits of our industry-leading scale, we don't feel this burning need to go do an M&A deal to gain scale. We have scale. We're very thoughtful about it. When you look at the M&A deals we've done over the years, there's some common DNA. Number one, they tend to fill a gap. That can be a gap in our brand architecture, that can be a geographical gap or both. Secondly, we look at it and we say we think it's scalable. That can be scalable on a regional basis. That can be scalable on a global basis. When I look and when the team looks at our brand architecture today, there's not necessarily an obvious gap.
Geographically, you know, we're about to open our 10,000th hotel. We're in 143 countries. There are 20-some-odd additional countries in the pipeline behind that. There are geographies where we don't have the sort of footprint we'd like to have today, so we'll continue to look. We'll use the same financial discipline that we've always used as we consider M&A. There are spots, you know. The most recent one we've done is citizenM. We're really excited about how that slots in the brand architecture, and our owner community is very excited about the growth prospects for that brand.
Have there been any kind of surprises or learnings from that? I know it wasn't huge, but just the extent that-
I don't think surprises, but I think. You know, we're off to a great start. Drew, maybe you wanna talk about that.
Yeah.
I think our early learnings validated an intuition we had when we were evaluating the acquisition, and that's that they are terrific from a technology perspective.
Yeah.
Right? We have experimented with kiosks for as long as I've been with the company. They've figured it out. Their kiosk product is excellent, very intuitive, works really well. Similarly, all of us have had the experience of staying in hotels that had an iPhone or a tablet or something that was meant to manage the whole room, and we often just sort of toss it aside in frustration 'cause it's too hard to figure out. Similarly, they've figured it out. They have a very intuitive tablet product that manages lighting, temperature. You can order, you can chat with the staff, all those sorts of things. There are some learnings that I think you'll see us adopt a version of in other parts of the portfolio.
Interesting.
Anything you wanna talk about?
Yeah, I'll just add, from the revenue demand side, we've been very pleased with the response of our customers that have been on our platforms. The interest in the brand has been significant. We've driven a lot of volume. The channel mix has been really strong and a big improvement. We've been very happy about that. In particular, as well, we also have the B2B side of the world, those customers that my group represents, and they've responded really well too. They're very interested in the brand. From a revenue side, we're really happy, from a loyalty Bonvoy side, really happy. As Tony mentioned, we're constantly learning and trying to get better. We saw their technology early on and said, "Wow, this is good.
How can we learn from it? How can we leverage it? We're in those conversations right now.
Interesting. We have about five minutes left. I still have a few more, but I definitely wanna open it to the floor for questions. There's gotta be
It's the hazard of an 8:00 A.M. slot.
Yeah.
in Las Vegas.
All right. I'll keep it going then. I think we'll have a brave soul. In terms of the brands and the extensions, we touched on a little bit earlier just in terms of the number, but where do you see the white spaces or opportunities just given you're already in 40-
Sure
plus kind of subsegments?
Yeah, I mean, the one that comes to mind, I talked in response to some of your earlier questions about the lead we enjoy in luxury. A growing subset of luxury is pick your adjective, wellness, longevity, whatever you might wanna however you might wanna describe it. I think that's a real opportunity for us. One of the most successful brand extensions we have is Ritz-Carlton Reserve, which to date has been a destination resort application. I think selectively there's an opportunity for an urban version of Ritz-Carlton Reserve. Then just not far over in Newport Beach, we're converting the Resort at Pelican Hill in Newport Coast, and it'll be our first St. Regis Estates, which is a bit of a brand extension for St. Regis, and I think there are some select opportunities for that as well.
Are there, outside of, you know, the luxury-
Mm-hmm
area, I mean, at the lower end, are there also kind of these white spaces or is it less so?
I'd like to think, you know, we're relatively in our infancy into our entry in midscale. We're 2.5 years in. I think we've done a good job with both transient-focused midscale and extended stay-focused midscale. There is extraordinary both consumer and developer demand in that extended stay midscale space. I feel like we've built out a good portfolio, but we'll continue to monitor that. Notwithstanding the way Sonder ultimately played out, I do think we believe there is real opportunity in alternative accommodation extended stay, and we'll continue to look at that.
Okay. Last chance. All right.
All right.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Appreciate it. Thanks for having us.