Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE:CHH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Dom Dragisich: Yes, I would expect to see that other fee or other revenues line item, obviously, it increased this year as a result of just bringing back certain programs following the pandemic. You have some of the QA that we do at the hotel level baked into that other revenue line item, term awards, those types of things. And so what I would expect in the future is that, that other revenue line item would probably grow fairly close to kind of the overall top-line revenues. But in quarter four, in particular, when you take a look at the comp versus 2021, a lot of that was due to the reinstatement of several of these programs.

Stephen Grambling: Helpful. Thanks so much.

Pat Pacious: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from David Katz with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

David Katz: Hi. Good morning everybody. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on your quarter. I wanted to just go back to Radisson a little bit, and I know there was some discussion about CapEx, broadly speaking. But just looking for a little more insight with respect to Radisson and whether it’s corporate CapEx or franchisee or owner CapEx with respect to Radisson, what is that branded system like in terms of its need?

Pat Pacious: So, I think it’s important, David, to kind of look at the portfolio. The vast majority of the hotels are Country Inn & Suites, which is a brand that performs very well and really slots in nicely in our portfolio just below where our Cambria brand is. The quality of those assets, the Radisson team did a very nice job of keeping the brand consistency there. A significant majority of the hotels are at their generation four prototype. So from the standpoint of the brand owners and that brand investing, and as I mentioned, that’s the vast majority of the hotels here. They’ve done a nice job of keeping the brand quality and keeping the product quality fairly high. As we look at growth in that segment, as Dom mentioned, we’re going to be leaning more into new construction than necessarily conversion.

That doesn’t mean 100% one way or the other. But it is a real opportunity for us to drive more new construction in that brand, which sits at about 450 hotels today. If we can drive that to the same unit count as where our Comfort brand sits today, that’s a significant growth opportunity for us and for owners, who are in the brand today and others who want to invest in it. So from that brand, we feel very, very confident that we have a really good starting point. The Radisson full-service brand is a little bit of a different story. There’s only about 66 some-odd hotels in that brand in the United States. There’s obviously a greater footprint of it outside of the U.S. and the Americas that are now part of our system. But that’s one that we are taking a close look at.

It’s a segment that, over time, has had some challenges to it. But if we look into that portfolio, we really see an opportunity to kind of re-inject some higher-quality assets into the brand. And as we get out in the marketplace and talk to owners of existing assets in that segment, there’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing here and the opportunity to convert their hotels, put in some capital to drive them higher is something that those owners are considering. So, I think as we get further into the year and have a little bit more of a viewpoint from the developers we’re working with, we’ll have a better sense of what their capital requirements are going to be in order to perform at the level we want to see that brand achieve.