Playa Hotels & Resorts N.V. (NASDAQ:PLYA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Bruce Wardinski: Yeah. I mean, I think, Tyler, right now, we can definitely say that for Mexico and the DR. And we’re targeting investment to go into Jamaica in order to continue to do that in Jamaica. And I would say that’s an opportunity for us. But there’s no question that if you look at our resorts, I mean, we have, for the large part, a very trophy portfolio. Our Ziva Cancun is on the best location in the hotel zone in Cancun. Our Hyatt Ziva/Zilara in Cap Cana is in the top destination in all of Punta Cana. Los Cabos, we’re direct connection to the airport on one of the best stretches of beach in Los Cabos. Puerto Vallarta, it was originally one of the best Mexican hotels, a Camino Real. We’re on a private beach in Puerto Vallarta.

So you just look at the real estate. And then you combine that with the rebranding and kind of the — and we highlighted that, where the US consumer, in particular, but all consumers, are really much more familiar with all-inclusive. And once you experience all-inclusive and you like it, then you say, okay, now I want to go to the best ones in the market, we’re going to be top of the radar when it comes to that. So I think our goal needs to be and will be that we will continue to exceed the market conditions. We’re going to have a bigger premium. We should continue to have an ADR and RevPAR premium over our competition. And quite honestly, I’m not going to accept anything less than that.

Tyler Batory: Okay. Great. And then my last question is on group business. And it’s really been a pretty significant driver of results for hotels in the US. Your booked position in terms of the numbers that you gave sounds pretty strong. So just any more commentary in terms of what you’re seeing for group bookings? I mean, how sustainable is that strength? What percentage of your mix is typically group? Might that increase, going forward?

Ryan Hymel: Before we built the Ziva/Zilara Cap Cana, we were around 10%. So I expect that to kind of move up a little bit more as revenues grow as well. For us, we’re already booking well into ’25. I’m not expecting too much more being added to ’24 in the year for the year. And so I think it’s pretty sustainable. Again, we have the nice benefit of having Cap Cana, where we didn’t before. It’s an incremental property. So now we’ve satisfied — we used to say this kind of a year or so ago. We’re satisfying a lot of these meeting incentive planners who want to do a two or three-year rotation. And I think next year in Cabo, I referenced it earlier, that is the last group, I believe, that was at original kind of pre-pandemic or pandemic era rates that are being pushed through.

So everything that we’re booking now, even if it’s a same group or a group that stayed with us before, it’s incremental bookings and someone who wants to come back. It’s not just some legacy pent-up demand that we’re still trying to work through. So a lot of that was ’22, into ’23 and, like, the last couple of legacy ones are ’24. So, and then on top of that, you heard us mention before we’re spending money this year and, more importantly, next year on some of the meeting space in Cabo to kind of protect some of those kind of golden assets for us who drive a lot of meeting incentive business and allow us to yield.

Tyler Batory: Okay. That’s all from me. Thank you.

Ryan Hymel: Thanks, Tyler.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Bruce Wardinski for his closing remarks.

Bruce Wardinski: Great. Well, thank you all for participating today. We’re guardedly optimistic about the rest of this year and into the first half of next year, and we’ll be very focused on sales and operating fundamentals, and we look forward to having you all join us for our next quarterly call. Thank you.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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