Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE:H) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Hoplamazian: So first of all, World of Hyatt members are, in general, paying higher ADRs. And the total spend for World of Hyatt members tends to run mid teens to 20% higher than non-World of Hyatt members, and that’s been consistent. We’re seeing that same dynamic, by the way, for World of Hyatt members staying at our all-inclusive resource as well. We’re just starting. I mean I’m actually extraordinarily encouraged to see 17% roomnight penetration by the end of the year for World of Hyatt members. This is a significant expansion of the number of all-inclusive resorts that we’ve got. And the World of Hyatt members are discovering that resort experience at a pace, which is remarkable. And so I have increased enthusiasm and confidence that we’re going to see a growing level of World of Hyatt engagement and penetration over time.

Dori Kesten: I may have missed this. But have you said what percentage do you think it could grow to over time?

Mark Hoplamazian: Well, right now, if you look at our Ziva and Zilara hotels, which don’t have the benefit of a captive wholesale platform to our operating platform, which we have called ALG vacations, and they don’t have the benefit of a membership program at this point, UVC in our case. We’ve gotten to over 50% penetration from Hyatt channels into those hotels. That is Hyatt.com, but direct digital, but whether that’s mobile web or app, second, World of Hyatt and third, group business. We had a conversation yesterday with our Head of National sales — Global Sales rather. And I asked about his outlook with respect to selling group business into the AMR portfolio this year, and he’s very enthusiastic about that. So I think the direct channel is going to continue to grow. And our reference point, frankly, is the Ziva and Zilara experience that we’ve had, where Hyatt represents more than 50% of the traffic into those hotels.

Operator: Our last question will come from Smedes Rose from Citigroup.

Smedes Rose: I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about China. If you could just remind us what percent of your pipeline is now in China and maybe just on the development side, kind of what you’re seeing in terms of — is that starting to kind of rev back up as well as operations overall?

Mark Hoplamazian: Yes. China is performing in a manner that we would have hoped it would, which is to see a significant snap back once restrictions were lifted. January was a stunning month of performance. And we started — just to give you a reference point for how extraordinary the volume, instantaneous volume of traffic is. The first weeks of February, we were at higher occupancies in our system in China than we did in the United States. So it has been just an amazing recovery that happened instantaneously. So our outlook for the year was probably quite conservative going into the year, but — because we expected a slower ramp over the first half. Now it’s true that January was benefited tremendously by a massive amount of the year travel, and Lunar New Year was in January, which was just over the holiday period, I think we ran 15% above our prior peak.