Leslie Hale : I would say that overall, Austin, I think what you’re alluding to is just normal seasonality, right? So as Sean mentioned, October is generally a significant contributor for the quarter. It was relatively strong, but what you’re seeing in November and December is just normal seasonality. I think overall, we expect our portfolio to track with urban as expected. We think that urban is going to continue to outperform. And from a pace perspective in terms of what you mentioned, we expect urban leisure to do well as we kind of move into the holidays. Our group pace for the fourth quarter is about 122%, 123% of over last year, and we’re on par with 2019. So I think what you’re seeing in the numbers is just simply normal seasonality, but we’re not seeing degradation in what we consider from a demand perspective.
What I would also say to you is that October just as another data point, hit a new high on occupancy at 94% of 2019 level. So I think it’s just another proof point around just the general trend line.
Austin Wurschmidt : Yes. And I understand that the seasonality was more just thinking comping year-over-year if there was something specific.
Sean Mahoney : Yes. And Austin, just to jump in. We expect year-over-year growth in every month of the quarter, and that — and the variation on year-over-year growth is not going to dramatically vary quarter-over-quarter, maybe a couple of points here and there, but it will — we expect year-over-year growth every month of the quarter.
Austin Wurschmidt : Okay. That’s helpful. And then, Leslie, you highlighted the strength in your in-house group business in Northern California next year despite some of the well-known challenges around just citywide more broadly in that market. But I guess, how do you expect the Northern California region to perform overall relative to your broader portfolio next year just with that kind of positive group backdrop that you highlighted?
Leslie Hale : Well, let me just sort of frame and I’ll let Tom jump in with some color. Just to remind you, right, our footprint is diversified within Northern California. We only have 2 assets that are in the CBD, less than 600 keys and 3% of our rooms. And we — and as you correctly stated, we really rely on in-house group, which is what’s allowing our pace for 2024 to be ahead of last year by 21%.
Tom Bardenett : Yes. And Austin, what I would tag on is a couple of things. First and foremost, as we know, our footprint is not just CBD, but I will start with CBD because I think there is some decent news in regards to what’s expected when we think about next year. And a jump-off point is we were looking at international payment, and we were looking at the forecast for next year. And specifically, we were focused on, obviously, China being a #1 contributor in the past. So as an example, when we were looking at the payment in the San Francisco International, most recently in July and August, they were at 96% and 92% of 2019 levels, which is encouraging because year-to-date, they’re only at 90% in San Francisco. Then we broke it down to a smaller group, and we’ve looked at categories of where people are traveling from, and China, which was only at 29% in 2023 is expected to be at 74% in 2024.
And the reason that is, is because they’ve already changed the flights coming in over the last couple of months for future dates, which is encouraging. For instance, in the month of August, they only had 12 weekly slots and they went up to 18 in September and 24 in October. So the pace to be able to book future in San Francisco from China is there. And just as an example, in visitor spend, what they’re projecting from China is only about $406 million this year. They could potentially get to $1 billion next year and ’19 levels were $1.2 billion. So when we talk about international, that’s really important for San Francisco because we all know the Moscone story and what’s happening there and there’s — those will be up and down depending upon what happens.
