I think we’ve proven that we’ve created tremendous shareholder value through a number of investments that we have made in the past. And we will continue to look for those but absent a predictable or a foreseeable need for cash, we will continue to return capital to shareholders. In terms of the programmatic aspect of our disposition program, our practice in the past has been to complete our commitments and then provide some glide path with respect to the next phase and we expect to do the same after we complete the current commitment.
Richard Clarke: Thanks very much.
Operator: Our next question comes Duane Pfennigwerth from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Duane Pfennigwerth : Hey, thanks, not to harp on the LOIs, but can you just speak just high level to the capital structure change and the EBITDA loss that you would expect from these transactions and relatedly, how much of a tailwind on lower CapEx with this represent into next year?
Mark Hoplamazian : Again, I think we will, we will do two things one reiterate what we said before, which is that we expect to complete the program with a multiple range of somewhere between 13 and 15 times and that is where we remain we’re confident in that. And secondly, we will provide obviously, specific data on individual transactions with respect to both EBITDA and PAT and CapEx when we announce — when we have fully fully closed transaction. So yes, we will provide that. We’re just not going to provide it today.
Duane Pfennigwerth : Yep, sorry. Sorry to make you to repeat that. And then I guess just you would love your perspective high level this this idea that like high end leisure travelers tilted all their spend International after having had limited options to travel long haul since pre-COVID. Pent up demand for Europe a pent up demand for international, how do you think that evolves into 2024? Do you see that trend continuing more of the same? Or does domestic leisure battle back next year in your view?
Mark Hoplamazian : Yeah, I think the fact is that, part of what we, the reason we had such great confidence through COVID, that we were going to fully recover is that travel is an essential human need, human connectivity, and so forth so is discovery. So I think it’s not surprising at all that when able to. People decided to branch out and go and either visit again or visit for the first time. Other destinations Cancun was the goto market during, during COVID. So it was not surprising that we saw a broadening of destinations, Cancun remains remarkable, and the Caribbean remains a remarkable and great destination. And so our confidence that it’s going to remain a really, really attractive place to be, is extremely high. The quality level of the experiences continues to rise, I would say, thanks in large part to what we’re doing with our luxury and five-star properties.
The bar has gone up a lot. And I think as more and more of our members are rolled, the five members are experiencing that they’re coming back and booking into the future. So we’re really encouraged by all of that. It has also benefited our European hotels. I think ALGV, which books across many brands, but their departures to Europe are up over 100% year-over-year. Now Europe is not a particularly large base of business for them. But it’s notable that it’s doubled, year-over-year is just another signal that that there’s more activity outbound. So I think that the domestic, the domestic destinations, U.S. destinations, and Mexico and the Caribbean, are going to actually benefit from the same desire to branch out and expand Brett — from places like Europe.
Our European base last year was down significantly, and or this year, and improved over the course of this year was down last year. But I think it’s going to improve over the course of this coming year. So there’s a balance across the globe. And I think leisure demand in total, remains really strong.
Joan Bottarini : Yeah, I would just add a couple of data points, we went through the pace that we’re seeing into Cancun for festive in the first quarter. As far as our legacy properties. And that is, — in the U.S. and primarily the U.S. consumer, our legacy non-resort leisure properties are looking at a effective pace of about 20%. And our resort hotels into the first quarter are also looking at pace of about 20%. So the health of the U.S. consumer into our U.S. leisure and resort destinations is extremely strong so we can continue to see that strength as Mark mentioned. And customers really — our customer base really prioritizing leisure travel.
Duane Pfennigwerth : Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from Connor Cunningham from Melius research, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Conor Cunningham : Hi, everyone. Thank you. Just on distribution. You’ve talked about significant growth in the loyalty program. I’m just curious on how that’s translated to direct distribution. We’ve heard a lot of travel companies talk about loyalty program growth, but there hasn’t been a material change and just distribution in general. Is there a maturation period as you sign up new people before they start to book more direct than they have in the past just curious. Thank you.
Mark Hoplamazian : Yeah, I think there are two, thank you for the question, Conor. There are two dimensions to this the first is loyalty program. And yes, there is a ramping period, if you will, a maturation as you described it that will occur. Our penetration, world of high penetration has grown 100 basis points year-over-year. Think we’re well above 40 at this point into the low to mid 40s In terms of total penetration, which is something like 800 or 1,000 basis points over the last several years. So we’ve continued to see that growth. And the second dimension is the improvement of the other digital resources. We have re skinned if you will and re-enabled our Hyatt.com presents for all of our functionality, website functionality, site functionality for all of our hotel brands.
The program is rolling out by brand at this point and our app, and our, our web page our.com our brand.com Page won a lot of accolades and recognition recently as being best in class with respect to travel and leisure businesses. So we’ve invested a lot. We’re not done with the application of the, the rollout of the capabilities, but that’s actually improving, things like conversion, our drop rates have declined, we actually have hard data to show that the changes that we made are having a commercial impact. Our total direct is in the range of 70%. And if you look at, the accepted wisdom, if you will, is sighs was everything. But one of our biggest competitors is it’s 75. So if we can be at 70. If we’re within 500 basis points of one of the biggest, if not the biggest leisure company, or sorry, hospitality company in the world, it just proves that you can do it differently and be equally effective.
And so we have every expectation that we’re going to see growth in penetration and growth and direct channel over time. And I think one of the other dynamics is that we have continued to pay special attention to our travel advisors. We are using them differentially in our luxury division to make sure that we have real focus on the very highest rated guests. So those are those are a few data points for you to go on.
