Playa Hotels & Resorts N.V. (NASDAQ:PLYA) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So, what we are doing right now this year are about to start, there will be some rooms renovations to Ziva in Puerto Vallarta. Again, that’s a small relative EBITDA contributor. It punches outside its weight. So, there is some light disruption there, but it’s fully baked into our numbers. And then we are just doing public space renovations at the Ziva in Los Cabos, so no room disruption there. Probably expect to do some room renovations at Cabos next year, but that remains to be seen and then again, doing some public space renovations and some restaurants, additional incremental restaurant renovations at our Zilara and Cancun. So, admittedly, they are a little more defensive in nature and just kind of keeping up with some of our other brands banking news, even Zilara product.

So, I don’t have explicit guidance on ROI spend there, but it’s going to help us maintain, if not grow the ADRs we are seeing today, particularly in Cabos where there is a lot of competition for group business. And then buybacks versus other projects, like I have said, the bar is still high. There are some opportunities. You have heard Bruce talk about it many times, specifically the Ziva Cancun has some small adjacent land immediately to the kind of north of it where we could do an additional rooms tower. And so we are working through some of the planning and design phases and permitting phases to be able to do that, because that’s something while the bar and return hurdle will be high versus buybacks, that would be a great use of capital because it’s one of our most outstanding best-performing, best-margin properties.

It quite frankly needs more rooms when it already has well over 500 rooms and it would just be a nice real great incremental return. But other than that, we do have other opportunities in the portfolio, but buybacks still look great when we are trading at 8x-ish consensus.

Chad Beynon: Indeed. Thank you. And then with respect to MICE for ‘22 versus kind of what you are expecting for ‘23, can you give us an update on that? And then also in terms of non-package add-ons, can you just remind us do you usually see stronger kind of incidence of purchase from MICE guests? And how does that play into the guide for ‘23? Thanks.

Ryan Hymel: Yes. So, our MICE business for ‘23, we have got $55 million on the books. That’s up $5 million from the last time we spoke. That’s almost like 1.75x is what we did in 2019 and 2024 is trending up nicely. We have got almost $30 million on the books and that’s up roughly 30% versus the same time last year. Yes, MICE groups are big contributors to non-packaging, and that’s why you saw some sequential step-ups in kind of the back half of last year as more groups came back. You just think about the nature of it. One, you have got the group or the company who is having and holding the events, right. And so they are spending event dollars and presentation dollars or big celebration on the beach, etcetera. And then the guests who are coming as part of those groups usually are not paying themselves.

A lot of times, they are either coming by themselves or they are bringing a guest or a spouse. And so they have got more out-of-pocket capacity because then they have got extra time to go to the spa or wine upgrades, things like that because they didn’t pay for the vacation in the first place. So, it’s a solid base of non-package and quite honestly, why as you can imagine, our Ziva, Zilara and Cap Cana has been one of the best non-packaged performers sequentially over the last year because of the influx of MICE business and to the credit of the General Manager and the staff there, some of the neat initiatives they have done on property to continue to push on package.

Chad Beynon: Okay. Thank you very much. Nice quarter.

Ryan Hymel: Thanks Chad.