Marriott International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MAR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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And then, lastly, you’ve heard us talk about this the last couple of quarters, but we continue to see in the data real legs to this phenomenon of blended trip purpose and we think that’s going to continue to drive occupancy, particularly in the days of the week that historically we considered shoulder days.

Richard Clarke: Maybe just as a follow-up to that, your kind of composite US and Canada luxury RevPAR down year-on-year in the in the quarter. I mean, how much are you putting that down to the international travel moving overseas from the U.S. or is there some overall price moderation going on within luxury properties there?

A – Leeny Oberg: So I’ll jump — I’ll start, Tony, and feel free to jump in. So a couple of things. Certainly, we do attribute it to the reality that a year ago in Q2, there were meaningfully fewer choices for travel. They really were consistent restrictions for going overseas, last airlift, et cetera. And there’s clear that when you look at the travel patterns this year that there is a big exodus of Americans going over to Europe and other places in the world. So that certainly had an impact. The other thing I would say is that on luxury in the U.S., we actually saw a strengthening in the metropolitan areas. And they, in general, have a little bit lower RevPAR than some of the resorts. So some of this is a bit of a mix shift.

And as you saw, the rate hardly moved in U.S. and Canada in Q2, and that was off of a year last year in Q2 where luxury rates were extraordinary. So just as a reminder, luxury rates have — in U.S. and Canada have actually outpaced inflation when you compare to ’19 and that still is the case while the other segments are coming more and more in line with inflation-adjusted rates as they continue to gain, as you saw ADR up 4% in the second quarter. And as we also said in our prepared remarks, there is a normalization going on. There’s definitely a more seasonal pattern to travel, and frankly, a nice sturdy mix of leisure, business transient and group that supports pricing going forward for the industry, we think.

Richard Clarke: Thanks very much.

Operator: Thank you. We’ll take our next question from David Katz with Jefferies.

David Katz: Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to just focus on the capital returns for a bit, which had a significant bump, and again, my sense is that this is something you’ll discuss in analyst meeting. But can you help us just look out a little bit and assume that the business momentum continues? And maybe just help us calibrate how you think about the growth in that capital return if we can make our own assumptions about where the business would go.

A – Leeny Oberg: Sure. Thanks for the question. You’re right, the adjusted EBITDA and strong cash flow kind of move upward in our guidance has given us a view to increase our expected capital returns this year. And just in basic math, the midpoint of our EBITDA moved up approximately roughly $150 million, about half of it outperformance in Q2 and about half of it increased guidance in the back half of the year. And if you just kind of simply take that and lever it, it’s pretty straightforward about how you see the increased capital returns. But I do want to go back to our first kind of the most important thing, which is that we first want to invest in our business to grow. And we want to do that in a way that provides returns that are attractive for our shareholders and do it in ways that kind of meet our strategic objectives.

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