Alex Brignall: Maybe just one follow-on to that. On conversions in general, it seems like a lot of the conversions and Iberostar will be an example, are sort of smaller, less known brands to larger groups, franchise or groups. So that’s continuing the trend of the bigger groups taking a bigger share of the total pie rather more so than independent conversions. Is that like when you think about these kind of bolt-on deals, is that the way that you think about it? It’s effectively some mass conversion deal of a sort of existing smaller brand that just sort of joins your group and becomes another brand of yours?
Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson: Well, if you think about the nature of the industry and what it takes to succeed, you’ve got to have very strong technological capabilities. You’ve got to have a very strong loyalty program, et cetera. So this platform that we have and only a few others really have at this sort of scale is what differentiates the majors. So I think you will see more of these smaller brands wanting to work together with the majors because then they get the benefit of that platform. So yes, I mean, I think we’ve seen that for many years and it makes sense that it would continue to be the direction of travel.
Operator: And the next question goes to Jaafar Mestari of BNP Paribas.
Jaafar Mestari: I’ve got two, if that’s okay. Just firstly, going back on the system fund comments. I appreciate the high-level view is there’s timing differences and accounting differences and revenue EBIT matters less than cash flow. All that’s very clear. Still keen to understand the swing in the headline EBIT a bit more. And just to clarify, for the last couple of statements now, you’ve been saying there’s increased investments in consumer marketing, loyalty and direct channels. Are we just actually describing what’s happening, system funds growing, taking more revenue and as a result, spending more in those as it should? Or are you in any way saying that there’s extra investments into consumer marketing, loyalty and direct channels.
Just to clarify on that. And then secondly, on the brand momentum at avid, the openings are happening, there really doesn’t seem to be much momentum in the signings in the last couple of quarters outside of the property. Your opening, it looks like the pipeline is actually dropping by a couple of properties. What’s the plan here to reaccelerate avid? You mentioned that transaction history would help. But what evidence do we have right now to make a strong point that avid is more than a niche brand that has plateaued early?
Keith Barr: Great. Well, thank you. On the technical accounting piece, I might have Paul chime in if he needs to. But philosophically, the — what the amazing part of our business, as you know, is the system fund is grows every year as revenues grow and that gives us increased capacity to invest into the business. And when COVID hit, we took a significant amount of cost out of the business, as you would expect. And then we were quite thoughtful about how does that cost come back in? Strategically, you could kind of just sprinkle it a bit of everywhere and bring things back up and we said, actually, let’s try to figure out what are the big things we can lean into. So the capacity we saved during COVID enabled us to transform the loyalty program with significantly more investment lean more into technology, lean into more into consumer-facing marketing campaigns.
And so it was basically finding those efficiencies and then leveraging the system fund to drive performance and drive transformation. And then as the system fund continues to grow, we’ll continue to look for efficiencies to continue to reinvest back into the business, too. But we’re very, very well positioned today a better position day than ever before in terms of the system fund.
