And we need to continue to show investors that there is a huge ancillary fee opportunity out there that we’re beginning to deliver on. You began to see that this quarter. And I think, finally, we need to continue to show investors that we are very disciplined when it comes to capital allocation in terms of the accretive deals that we’ve been doing, like Vienna House and seeding new brand launches, such as ECHO and now WaterWalk, as we continue to pay out a dividend payout rate in the 30s and return excess cash to shareholders.
Patrick Scholes: Okay. Thank you. I do think something that might be helpful would be to have a big Investor Day. I don’t think we’ve had one from you and you folks in a number of years. So, that’s my [inaudible] opinion of something that might help. Moving on to my follow-up question. Is there anything you folks in the executive management team think you could be doing better at this point? Thank you.
Geoff Ballotti: Well, we think about that every day, Patrick. I mean, I think the one thing that, the last 10 months has proven to us is that we could always continually improve when it comes to our communications with everyone. Throughout these last 10 months, I think the one thing that we learned was that more communication is better with our team members, certainly to your point with our shareholders and investors, and with our franchisees. I mean, we’re feeling right now that we have a franchisee engagement level that’s never been higher. The best measure of that is certainly our attention rates and we need to continue to work on that.
Patrick Scholes: Great. I have a couple more questions. I’ll hop in the queue. Thank you.
Geoff Ballotti: Thanks, Patrick.
Operator: Thank you. We go next now to Brandt Montour of Barclays.
Brandt Montour: Hi, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. So, the infrastructure spend and the implied lift that you’re looking for in the rest of the year from that segment, can you just give us a sense of what you think that you did in the 1Q or what sort of delta or lift you got in the 1Q from that segment? And then when you just broadly on this piece of your business, is this business already booked or what kind of dynamics are there around your visibility for this specific business that gives you that confidence?
Geoff Ballotti: It is a great question, Brandt, in terms of visibility. There’s a slide in our investor presentation that we have seen an uptick in federal government allocations from 15% last year to nearly 40% of the incremental $640 billion spend of the $1.5 trillion bill. And it’s mostly to the states, but only a fraction of that has been spent from a visibility standpoint. I mean, when you think about those big bridge and road and train projects and airport projects, the shovels haven’t hit the ground. But since we’ve been investing in our capabilities, we have been able to track an 11% increase in infrastructure revenues for our franchisees. And everything that we’re doing around that, last week, we launched Wyndham Business to help manage companies’ travel needs, providing discounts and allowing planners to instantly book without needing to RFP or contract at one of our franchised hotels.
And the pace of applications immediately doubled and we think that will help lead that double-digit uptick that we’re seeing in leads from those projects. We’ve seen a 20% increase in new accounts. So we think there is a tremendous amount of potential for us out there in the quarters ahead. We think it will translate into, I believe, Michele, about $5 million of royalty revenues to us this year and we’ll put out what we think it means for us once those projects get underway. I’d stop maybe there. Well, I’d say, finally, one thing. I think an opportunity that we believe is also out there that we’re starting to see is a pickup in the oil and gas markets. I mean, when you think about, Brandt, the nation’s power demand growth from data center build-outs or AI booms or EV charging stations that are driving the electrification of America, natural gas is coming back.
And some of our nation’s largest oil and gas states are seeing a steady pickup they’re increasingly excited about. I had the chance to talk to the CEO of one of our large owners last night, who has a lot of properties, a lot of Microtel, Super 8s and Hawthorn Suites in West Virginia. He’s seeing trucks back in his parking lot. He said that occupancy is slowly coming back. ADR is still not there yet, but he’s very optimistic. And when we look at states that did perform well above last year in some of those oil and gas states, West Virginia was up, I think, about 5% over prior year, and up in Louisiana, similarly. Alaska was up double digits. So with over 10% of our system positioned in oil and gas markets, we’re also feeling, in addition to infrastructure looking ahead, very well positioned to capture that comeback as a tailwind as well.
Brandt Montour: Okay. That’s great. Thanks for that. And then maybe on the other side of things, on the leisure domestic travel side, I think, we sort of got a good sense for the easing comps. But sort of in light of what we’re all seeing away from you in the macro, in the lower end and middle income consumer, I guess, we’re heading into the leisure travel — the big leisure travel period this summer. That’s generally a strong period of the calendar for you. What are the indicators you could point to or what do you look at year-over-year that kind of gives you a sense of how that consumer is gearing up for this summer?
Geoff Ballotti: Sure. Kind of back to Patrick’s question earlier in terms of what’s weighing on our stock. It’s that concern of that middle income guest. But what we’re seeing is that that middle income guest is more employed, both and we look at their wages and their savings. It’s — they’re higher than they were back in pre-COVID levels. Their home prices are up, their stocks are up, their deposit levels are stable and they’re in good shape. We look at consumer confidence. That’s obviously growing. If you look at the monthly insight report, I think, consumer sentiment is up significantly, from like 65% to close to 80% from last March to this March. We look at length of stay and we are continuing to see longer lengths of stay by a couple hundred basis points versus where they were before things slowed.
Booking windows we look at daily and they continue to tick up. We talked about our trends looking out to Memorial Day weekend and into May, but our booking windows are similarly up 7% to last year from 19 days to 21 days now. Cancellation rates are steady. And drive-to, which is about 90% of our domestic demand, continues to chug along. People are driving further than they were pre-COVID and we think it’ll continue to be the number one vacation preference this summer.
Brandt Montour: Excellent. Thanks, Geoff.
Geoff Ballotti: Thanks, Brandt.
Operator: We’ll go next now to Stephen Grambling of Morgan Stanley.
