Operator: The next question is from Bill Crow from Raymond James.
Bill Crow : As we think about the change to your guidance for 2023, how much of that is driven by areas outside the U.S.? And has there really been any change or any positive change to U.S. expectations?
Kevin Jacobs : Yes. I think, Bill, what you’re seeing is it’s kind of — it’s across the board. It’s positive change to all regions. Largely, I think Chris covered this earlier in the call, largely concentrated with the demand strength continuing into the second quarter and us taking the second quarter up a little bit, a little bit in the third quarter and then the — and if you think about pushing out the anticipated slowdown in the back half of the year, but there is improvement in the outlook in all regions, including the U.S.
Bill Crow : A follow-up. I’m going to actually switch my follow-up, and I want to actually address something you just said, Chris, which is that large corporates seem to be flat in their demand. And I’m just curious whether this early in the recovery, and I know there are issues going on in tech and financial services in particular, but does this give credence to that argument that business travel never fully recovers?
Christopher Nassetta : I mean, I don’t think so. Well, the #1 prima facie evidence it has. So I mean, Bill, but I just finished on a couple of questions ago, in the data in the first quarter, business travel has already recovered. I think what it means for us is in the intermediate term, as you get more certainty in the environment, there’s upside in business travel, meaning we’ve done a good job of shifting to SMEs. With that shift, we’re sort of, on a volume basis, back to where we were. Rate base is higher. The big corporates still have to travel. By the way, the big corporates are also not one size fits all. It’s really where you see the impact is technology, banking consulting. If you look at a lot of the other big corporate sectors, they’re still growing, but those sectors weighed it down.
As those sectors stabilize and start to think about the future and being competitive and getting their sales forces back out and get out of cost-cutting mode, which they will, they always do, I look at it as upside. So I think when you wake up in a year or two and we’re in a little — we’re in — whenever we get to a more certain environment, hopefully it’s sooner than later, I think the opportunity will be that business travel, both volume and price, will be higher than the prior peak. I think the same thing for the group business. I think this has done — what’s happened in the last three years has done nothing but reinforced — I mean, we’re definitely benefiting from a lot of pent-up demand, but it’s done nothing but reinforce, as I talk to all of our group customers and the like, that the need for people to be congregating to do the things that they do in culture and collaboration and innovation and all of those fun things.
So I kind of famously said when we get through this in like April, May of 2020, I think it will look a lot more like it did than it does. And I think that’s — I still think that. And I think the data largely supports it. If you look at the business mix, like this quarter versus pre COVID and the big segments of business transient, leisure transient and group, we’re within a point. I mean, right now, the only difference is leisure is a point higher then group’s a point lower. Otherwise, it’s about where it was, right? And that’s because group takes time to sort of — to come back. And in the meantime, leisure has been strong. But ultimately, as we get strong high-rated groups back, we will continue to mix more of that in. So I do not personally believe there is credence to that argument.
I think the data supports that argument at this moment.
