None of us want to go back to the days of €˜16, €˜17, €˜18, €˜19, where we anemic growth of the top line and no margin growth. It wasn’t fun for you guys to analyze the business and it certainly wasn’t fun for us as owners. And in our case, operator, since we had to self-op few hotels as well. So I think that these changes are here. There will be pressure points. And you’re right, once we can get group back to the levels in business transient there’ll be some add-ons from here and there. But I think the abuse and the amenity creep that we’ve seen for generations in my view, that game is over. It just doesn’t make sense in an environment where we’re going to continue to have cost pressures. And you’ve seen us. We’re giving you guidance where we’re expanding margins in part because of the great work done by the men and women at Park and our partners to really work hard to take cost out of the business.
So we’re going to continue to fight and find ways to continue to find those efficiencies.
Chris Woronka: Okay. Very helpful, Tom. That’s all I had. Thanks.
Tom Baltimore: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
David Katz: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question.
Tom Baltimore: Good morning.
David Katz: You covered a lot of detail. I just wanted to go back to the credit markets and it obviously plays in a couple of different ways. Sean’s comments, you talked about some of the alternatives for refi-ing. But we have seen some improvement in the credit markets lately. How important is that in order for you to be able to sell $200 million or $300 million of assets? Are you embedding some expectation that it will continue to improve in there, what’s your thoughts on how that all plays into what you’ve talked about so far?
Tom Baltimore: David, it’s a great question. I’ll take the first part of it. I think we’ve shown, as I said earlier, look, we’ve sold 39 assets since the spin for over $2 billion of different quality and with all with tax, legal, joint ventures, some very attractive assets, some less attractive and we continue to get it done. Right in the middle of the pandemic, we sold two assets in San Francisco for very, very aggressive pricing. So there is an abundance of capital out there, as you know, $400 billion in private equity just on the real estate side. Family offices, owner-operators, regional banks are still open for business. Clearly, the big money center banks are being more — are constrained and being a little more careful but I think we’ve demonstrated time and time again, whether it’s — and we haven’t been able to use seller financing.
We haven’t been — we haven’t needed to use seller financing. Our buyers have been able to raise the necessary capital to get deals done. So we’re confident. And obviously, with — once the tightening cycle and there’s better visibility there, the banks are going to be back in business. We’re in a 4% to 5% range. For those of us that are older that have got more scars, 4% to 5% is not that bad. The problem is we’ve got a generation of people that have been dealing with free money. With all due respect, the free money is over. And so you got to work a little harder. And I think that’s going to play to Park’s benefit over the intermediate and long term to be candid but the debt markets will be back. There will be liquidity. There’ll be the ability to be able to get deals financed.
It’s not just a phone call anymore. You got to do a little bit of work. But we certainly think there’ll be plenty of capital for transactions.
David Katz: Okay. Thank you.
