Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (NYSE:WH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Michele Allen: Sure. I would say what we really are factoring into our guidance is — well, first, our U.S. business has been fully recovered to pre-COVID levels since the second half of 2021, I mentioned. And finished 2022, 9% above 2019. So we’re looking to add another 4% to 6% on top of that growth this year. And I would say from a macro perspective, in the U.S., we began to lap more normalized comps in the second half of 2022. We were seeing about 3% year-over-year growth. So we’re expecting a continuation of that trend into 2023. And internationally, where not all markets are yet recovered to the pre-pandemic levels, there’s a bigger year-over-year growth opportunity. So we’re expecting all of our international regions with the exception of Asia Pac to get pretty close back to 2019 occupancy levels. So overall, we’re looking for about half of our growth to come from occupancy recovery and the other half to come from some modest ADR growth.

Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Bellisario with Baird.

Michael Bellisario: Michele, just one follow-up there. Just the 4 to 6 sort of system-wide globally. Can you give any more specifics on just what the U.S. expectation is versus international, just the spread in the components of the 4 to 6. I know you sort of touched on it a little bit, but any more specifics would be helpful.

Michele Allen: U.S. is certainly going to be lower growth overall compared to international since there still be in recovery mode for sure. So like I said, there’s probably in the U.S., there’s going to be a few points of occupancy growth and a few points of ADR growth. Whereas internationally, we’re expecting to see again some modest ADR growth, but a much bigger lift coming out of occupancy.

Michael Bellisario: Okay. And then, Geoff, for you, you have a big competitor now getting into the economy space, maybe big picture. What are the risks to you on the conversion front? And what are you hearing so far from your franchisees?

Geoffrey Ballotti: Congrats to you and Mary on the birth of Lucy, last Tuesday. Andy need to play made a father of four girls, I wish you two more. We talked about that offline. Yes, we’re not seeing any impact to your question on our economy brands. We have the most recognized economy brands in the space, and we’ve been in this space for over 30 years. We know these customers. We know these owners, and we know it’s important to both. The one thing that COVID has demonstrated to our economy owner base is that they wish they own more Wyndham product given just how well our brands performed throughout COVID and how well they performed after 9/11 and the great financial crisis. These everyday essential construction and infrastructure workers never stopped traveling and they were staying in our economy brands in record numbers, which was what allowed our franchisees to never have to close down.

So we’ll continue to provide the most flexible and the most competitively priced economy brands with a focus on what we know is important to our guests and what we also know is important to our owners. And our renovation and our PIP costs run 3 to 5x less than many of our larger brand peers and our technology stack installation. And our technology stack operating costs remain the lowest at 4 to 6x less with just a continued focus on generating the best cash-on-cash returns in the Economy segment.

Operator: Our next question comes from Patrick Scholes of Truist Securities.