Summit Hotel Properties, Inc. (NYSE:INN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Chris Woronka: Okay, great. Thanks, Trey. And the follow up question. It really has to do with — we hear a lot about conversions from the big brand companies and how it’s become a bigger part of their unit growth strategy. Do you guys have a view as you look across all your markets? I mean, obviously conversion doesn’t add new supply, but it might add a new brand family member, something you already have. Is there any way to measure that in terms of — is there a net positive, net negative? And secondarily to that, as we see Marriott Hilton kind of go down a little bit on the chain scales and enter the lower chain scales, which you guys don’t really play in, but is there any — do you think there’s ever going to be any impact there with someone who goes from a Hampton and now goes to a Spark or a True. Anyway that’s — I know it is a long question, but is there any way to think about that for your business? Thanks.

Jon Stanner: Yes, thanks, Chris. It’s Jon. Look, we’ve obviously followed closely what the brands have done, and I don’t think that it’s terribly surprising that they’re searching for additional channels to help grow net unit growth. I do think that it’s a market by market type of analysis when you look at the impact. I would say we haven’t felt it yet. It’s not something that is high on my list of concerns. I do think to the extent that you’re bringing in additional units and rooms into a brand family in a market, it can have an impact. I don’t think a lot of those units are going to be units that we’re competing for redemption type of customers for. So something that we’re monitoring and again it’s not something that we’ve spent a lot of time actively searching to get into some of those new product types or — and we certainly haven’t felt the impact of them coming into our markets yet.

And then again, a lot of the initial rollout of these new brands, frankly, have been in markets that we’re not in. They’ve been in more secondary and tertiary markets.

Chris Woronka: Okay. Okay, good. Good to hear. Thanks, Jon.

Jon Stanner: Thanks, Chris.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Michael Bellisario from Baird. Mr. Bellisario, your line is now open.

Michael Bellisario: Thanks. Good morning, guys.

Jon Stanner: Good morning, Mike.

Michael Bellisario: I want to go back to the leisure commentary. Did you see cancellations occur? I know you mentioned the weakness in the snow and mountain locations, but did you not see ADR pick up close to the date of arrival and maybe was that because occupancy was softer? Maybe just help us understand the timeline of events that occurred that led to the leisure softness on the ADR side.

Jon Stanner: Yeah we didn’t see cancellations. It just slower pickup and I think part of it, again, especially in some of these ski markets, you get some last minute pickup when the snow is really good. We saw that last year was an incredible year from a snow perspective in these markets. And so you got a lot of last minute bookings, of people seeing what was happening on the mountains and booking close to their stay. We just got less of that pickup this year, and I’m not terribly concerned about it long term. I think we’re going to have really strong summers in both of those markets. And the summer has actually become a stronger season than the ski season for some of these markets but it did influence our rates in the first quarter, but I didn’t interpret the rate performance in those two markets in particular as there being some sort of read through to softening leisure demand.

I think that there was just — it was more of an issue around pricing and last minute pickup.

Michael Bellisario: Any different takeaways from Asheville, Fort Lauderdale, Tucson, Phoenix, other leisure focused markets? Did you see the softer demand?

Jon Stanner: Yeah, those are — you highlighted some of our leisure focused markets. We’re under renovation in Asheville, so we don’t have a clean comp there. We did see some similar rate softening in Fort Lauderdale, and some of that was around spring break, and I think that’s been fairly well documented what happened in kind of the Miami Fort Lauderdale market in and around spring break. Demand was fine, a little less last minute pickup in a little rate softness. And again, I think you’ve got to put into context that rate softness is on rates that are 20%, 30% higher than in 2019, and we just didn’t have the same level of pickup. I’m not sure that I really would extrapolate that into, again, something that is showing real weakness on a leisure side. I think we’ve got to be mindful of what those comparisons look like and I do think the comparisons were mostly difficult in the first quarter.

Michael Bellisario: Got it. Understood. And then just my follow up, switching gears just on CapEx, can you maybe provide some numbers around what a standard seven year, 14 year renovation cost today? What did it cost a couple of years ago? And maybe what’s the hardest part of the underwriting process for CapEx projects and how you internally decide which projects to do? Thanks.