Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Q1 2026 Earnings Call - AI-Driven Profitability and RevPAR Recovery Outpace Expectations

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Wyndham Hotels & Resorts first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Matt Cuzzi, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis and Investor Relations. Mr. Cuzzi, please go ahead.

Matt Cuzzi, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis and Investor Relations, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Thank you, operator. Good morning, thank you for joining us. With me today are Geoff Ballotti, our CEO, and Amit Tripathi, our CFO. Before we get started, I want to remind you that our remarks today will contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risk factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risk factors are discussed in detail in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and any subsequent reports filed with the SEC. We will also be referring to a number of non-GAAP measures. Corresponding GAAP measures and a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to GAAP metrics are provided in our earnings release and investor presentation, which are available on our investor relations website at investor.wyndhamhotels.com.

We are providing certain measures discussing future impact on a non-GAAP basis only because without unreasonable efforts, we are unable to provide the comparable GAAP metric. In addition, last evening, we posted an investor presentation containing supplemental information on our investor relations website. We may continue to provide supplemental information on our website and on our social media channels in the future. Accordingly, we encourage investors to monitor our website and our social media channels in addition to our press releases, files submitted with the SEC, and any public conference calls or webcasts. With that, I will turn the call over to Geoff. Geoff?

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We’re very pleased to report a strong start to the year with first quarter results highlighting the strength of the value proposition we deliver to our owners in a faster than expected RevPAR recovery for our U.S. select service brands. Our development momentum continued with net room growth of 4% and a pipeline which increased for the 23rd consecutive quarter to a record of over 259,000 rooms. We delivered 21% growth in ancillary revenues. We generated $64 million of free cash flow. We returned $85 million to our shareholders. Global RevPAR improved 450 basis points sequentially from the fourth quarter.

Domestic RevPAR, excluding last year’s hurricane impact, improved over 600 basis points to essentially flat and ahead of our -2% to -3% expectation as demand continued to pick up throughout the quarter. January’s 4% RevPAR decline improved to +1% growth for February and also for March. Our 3 largest states of Texas, California, and Florida, which account for one quarter of our U.S. room count, improved by 800 basis points sequentially from -11% in Q4 to down only -3% in Q1. The Q4 strength we saw in our Midwest and industrial states continued into Q1 without performance in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.

Immigration and trade policies that created an environment of uncertainty appear to have stabilized, strong leisure demand over the spring break travel season has provided improved confidence among many franchisees as they approach the peak leisure summer travel season. April month-to-date RevPAR growth has been consistent with February and March. International RevPAR growth was consistent with the fourth quarter at down 1% in constant currency. In Canada, RevPAR increased 8% on increased pricing power and improved demand. In EMEA, RevPAR grew 1% with strong performance in Turkey, Greece, and Spain, offset by softness in the Middle East, which declined from +18% in Q4 to down 5% in Q1. RevPAR in Mexico fell with lower U.S. inbound travel, driving pricing pressure and dropping our Latin America RevPAR by 4% versus prior year.

Excluding Mexico, our Latin America region saw an 11% RevPAR increase, driven by strong pricing and demand growth in Argentina, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Asia Pacific RevPAR improved nearly 700 basis points from down 7% in Q4 to down 1% in Q1. Strength in Thailand and Vietnam was offset by China, where RevPAR improved 540 basis points sequentially from down 10% in Q4 to down 5% in Q1, driven by continued occupancy improvement, which remains a significant tailwind at only 88% of pre-COVID levels.

Earlier this month, a large contingent of our franchise sales, operations, and technology team members attended AAHOACON26, the Asian American Hotel Owners Association Conference in Philadelphia, which aside from Wyndham Global Conference, is the largest gathering of select service hotel owners in the U.S. Our booth at AAHOACON’s trade show was the busiest it’s ever been, and developer enthusiasm for our brands and our AI-driven technology offerings designed to capture revenue at every touch point of the guest journey was strong. Developers are increasingly noting that our best-in-class technology, powered by providers like Sabre, Oracle, Salesforce, Canary Technologies, is making our brands ever more efficient and less expensive to operate, and that our rapidly expanding AI-enabled shared service approach is lowering their breakeven point and making their hotels more profitable to run.

This increased interest in our brands is certainly reflected in our first quarter results, where new hotel contracts awarded in the United States increased by 8%, and where our global development pipeline grew to a record of over 2,200 hotels. As the most asset-light player in the industry with a development pipeline whose domestic and international rooms carry a 30% FeePAR premium, we’re structurally upgrading Wyndham’s long-term earnings power as we continue to move towards higher tier and higher RevPAR segment brands. As we previewed on our last call, net rooms were flat domestically, which included legacy affiliated room exits from the sale of Vacasa Vacation Rentals to Casago, along with TNL’s closure of 17 vacation resorts from our Blue Thread partner’s previously announced resort optimization initiative.

On the opening side, momentum was driven by strong conversion activity from upscale Travelers’ Choice Award winners like the V Capri Palm Springs, which joined our Dolce by Wyndham brand, and Kauai’s boutique Island Sky Ocean Hotel, which joined our Trademark Collection by Wyndham, a brand that has grown to over 100 hotels in the U.S. with 99 hotels in its global development pipeline. Domestic new construction activity was again fueled, as it will be for the decade ahead, with new ECHO Suites by Wyndham Hotels opening in markets like Colorado Springs, our 7th in the past 6 months, with our 20th opening 2 weeks ago in Bozeman, Montana.

We also saw more new construction upper midscale, dual-branded La Quinta Hawthorn Suites prototypes opening in popular tourist destinations like Leavenworth, Washington, and more new construction upper upscale hotels like the Dolce by Wyndham, opening in the heart of South Beach, Florida. Internationally, we increased the number of net rooms by 9%. EMEA grew net rooms by 7% with standout new conversions like our 90th Ramada by Wyndham in Turkey with the opening of the Ramada Encore by Wyndham Midyat, along with several new construction additions, including the Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Tashkent, located in the heart of Uzbekistan’s capital. Latin America and the Caribbean grew net rooms by 12% with several notable Trademark Collection by Wyndham conversions, including the new Aparta Boutique Hotel in the heart of Cartagena’s Old City, along with the Decameron Barú, a Tripadvisor Hall of Fame award-winning resort near Playa Blanca.

In Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, we grew net rooms by 11%, driven by exceptional new construction additions such as the Wyndham Garden Manila Bay, which marks our first Wyndham Garden property in the Philippines. In China, we once again delivered double-digit net room growth for our direct franchising system and 13% net room growth across mainland China in total, with several new construction additions, including the Wyndham Grand Tengchong Hot Spring, our first Wyndham Grand in the Tengchong Yunnan province, and the Wyndham Fuzhou Gulou, which marks the first Wyndham five-star hotel in the bustling downtown of Fuzhou’s capital. Ancillary revenues increased 21% in the quarter, fueled by our renewed and very successful suite of Wyndham Rewards credit card products, along with the continued expansion of our strategic partnership initiatives and ongoing technology innovations.

Key to this growth is our award-winning loyalty program, where Wyndham Rewards occupancy contribution increased 120 basis points to a record 54% domestically. Global membership enrollments grew another 10% year-over-year, and the collective length of stay for our 124 million members grew by 6%. Our Wyndham Rewards Experiences platform is increasingly helping to drive that growth as well as deeper member engagement. In the first quarter, we introduced exclusive new opportunities for members to redeem for even more unforgettable experiences, like a private tasting with Chef Lorena Garcia at her Miami culinary loft, with stays at our new Registry Collection, Balfour Miami Beach Hotel, and private suite tickets for Harry Styles and Lady Gaga concerts at Madison Square Garden. Looking ahead, we’ll continue to leverage our premier partnerships to deliver these once-in-a-lifetime moments.

Next month, Wyndham Rewards members will have the exclusive opportunity to redeem points to play in the Pro-Am with PGA Tour professionals at the 20th Wyndham Championship, the last stop on the PGA Tour prior to the FedEx Cup playoffs. As our technology innovations have increasingly helped our franchisees operate more efficiently and more profitably, we’re rapidly deploying AI, making it easier for guests to discover and book Wyndham Hotels.

Today, every property that utilizes Wyndham Connect PLUS effectively has its own AI-powered voice agent. With more than 1,100 hotels live on this platform domestically and now ramping globally, that’s over 1,100 AI agents answering calls and chats on behalf of our owners, helping to drive nearly 300 basis points of incremental direct contribution for these hotels through agentic voice channels, while also driving meaningful cost savings for these owners by taking labor out of their hotels and front offices. In addition, nearly 5,000 franchisees already live on Wyndham’s proprietary AI-powered Wyndham Connect platform are collectively earning millions of incremental dollars by autonomously generating revenue from early check-ins, late check-outs, room upgrades and pet fees, incremental amenities and services, and so many other creative upsell opportunities they develop themselves.

Together, these initiatives are creating a durable competitive advantage that we expect to compound as adoption continues to ramp. Building on this momentum, AI is transforming our marketing economics and booking process performance, amplifying our reach, transforming our digital acquisition model, and optimizing our unit economics by allowing us to drive significant reservation volume growth, while consistently compressing our cost per click and cost per acquisition. By embedding AI across the full guest engagement journey and leveraging our partnership with Adobe, we are dramatically increasing personalization while keeping guests engaged longer, driving higher conversion rates, shifting demand into direct booking channels, and improving the foundational profitability of our business. Our strategy to meet guests wherever their travel intent is formed is working, and increasingly, that’s beginning inside of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, inside of Anthropic’s Claude, and inside of Google AI Mode.

Wyndham’s distribution engine has expanded into these important channels where our growing demographic of younger guests are progressively searching, planning, and booking. Last quarter, we announced our direct integration with Anthropic’s Claude, enabling subscribers to conduct intent-driven searches. This quarter, we’re excited to share that we’ve launched Wyndham apps on both Claude and ChatGPT, delivering that same functionality through a more visual and interactive experience, including dynamic mapping, rich property tiles, and detailed hotel pages, representing a highly interactive hotel discovery and decision journey. We’re pleased to report that we continue to make strong progress with Google to develop our direct booking agentic AI experience in AI mode, allowing our guests to experience the full value of booking directly with Wyndham through natural conversational interactions without ever leaving Google’s AI mode.

In closing, the over $450 million investment we’ve made in technology, which is enabling our AI innovation and which is detailed in our investor presentation posted last night to our investor relations website, serves as a powerful engine for franchisee profitability regardless of the economic climate. As we look ahead, we’re incredibly optimistic and see clear signs of strengthening consumer and business confidence, which we’re well-positioned to capitalize on as RevPAR in the select service segments continues its recovery. Most importantly, we want to extend our gratitude to our team members worldwide, whose unwavering commitment and resilience throughout the challenging macro environment over the past year has been the bedrock of our success. Now I’m very pleased to formally introduce Amit Tripathi, our newly appointed Chief Financial Officer.

Amit’s been in the lodging industry for most of his distinguished career, and with Wyndham for the past five years in a variety of roles, leading our M&A, our strategic development, and our franchise sales efforts, most recently as our Chief Development Officer. Amit’s combination of deep finance and capital markets expertise, his first-hand operational leadership at Wyndham, and his strong relationships with our franchisees have positioned him very well to take over as our CFO. With that, Amit will now walk us through our financial highlights and full year outlook. Amit.

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Thanks, Geoff. Good morning, everyone. I’m excited to step into the Chief Financial Officer role and to speak with all of you today. In my prior role as Chief Development Officer and collaborating with our regional presidents, I gained a strong understanding of the value proposition we deliver to owners and developers through The Wyndham Advantage. The continued development momentum we’ve seen across our system and our pipeline reinforces my confidence in the strength of our brands and our ability to achieve our long-term growth outlook. Turning to results, my remarks today will include a detailed review of our first quarter financial performance, followed by an update on our cash flows, our balance sheet, and our outlook. Before I begin, let me remind everyone that the comparability of our financial results continues to be impacted by the timing of our marketing fund spend.

In the first quarter of this year, marketing fund expenses exceeded revenues by $9 million compared to expenses exceeding revenues by $22 million in the first quarter of last year. To enhance transparency and provide a better understanding of the results of our ongoing operations, I’ll be highlighting our results on a comparable basis, which neutralizes the marketing fund impact. In the first quarter, we generated $327 million of net revenues and $156 million of adjusted EBITDA. Net revenues increased 3% year-over-year, primarily reflecting a 21% increase in ancillary revenues and system growth of 4%, partially offset by lower other franchise fees and the deferral of fees from Revo Hospitality Group. Ancillary revenue growth was driven by the full quarter impact of our renewed long-term co-branded credit card agreement, which occurred at the end of first quarter last year.

Adjusted EBITDA declined 1% on a comparable basis, primarily reflecting the absence of one-time cost reductions, partially offset by our revenue growth. Adjusted diluted EPS for the quarter was $0.96, down 3% on a comparable basis, as a 1% comparable adjusted EBITDA decline, a marginally higher effective tax rate and increased interest expense was partially offset by the benefit of share repurchase activity. Development advance spent totaled $29 million in the first quarter, roughly consistent with our spend in first quarter 2025. We continue to see an increased appetite for our brands, and we’re happy to put our excess cash to work to bolster our footprint in some of the FeePAR accretive markets Geoff mentioned earlier. We continue to be disciplined with the use of development advances and underwriting above our cost of capital.

With these hotels historically entering our system at a FeePAR premium of roughly 40% above our system’s FeePAR. We returned $85 million to our shareholders in the first quarter through $51 million of share repurchases and $34 million of common stock dividends. In February, we issued $650 million of senior unsecured notes at 5.625% and primarily used the net proceeds to fully repay our then outstanding revolver borrowings and term loan A balance. Pro forma for the transaction, our nearest maturity is in the second half of 2028, and nearly all our debt is fixed at attractive rates. We ended the quarter with approximately $1.1 billion in total liquidity, and our net leverage ratio of 3.5 times remained as expected at the midpoint of our target range.

Now turning to outlook. We are reaffirming our expectation for full-year global net room growth of 4% to 4.5%, excluding any potential termination impact associated with Revo’s ongoing insolvency. As Geoff mentioned, first quarter U.S. RevPAR trends exceeded our expectations, and we’ve seen sustained 1% growth in the U.S. over the past three months. As such, we’ve updated our expectations to include our first quarter U.S. outperformance, as well as assumptions that the U.S. maintains this level of growth through the second quarter. Our expectations for the back half of the year in the U.S. remain unchanged at approximately flat until we gain further visibility in the peak leisure summer months. Accordingly, we’re raising our global RevPAR outlook to a range of up 1% to down 1%.

As part of our efforts to pursue all available remedies related to Revo’s ongoing insolvency proceedings and optimize the recoverability for our shareholders, we exercised our rights during the first quarter to foreclose on and take ownership of two properties in Europe that were previously owned by Revo. We expect these properties to generate approximately $10 million of net revenues in full year 2026, with a limited impact to earnings as we work to stabilize operations and implement an asset management plan to maximize value. Net revenues are now expected to be $1.47 billion-$1.5 billion. The impact from our increased RevPAR outlook falls within our adjusted EBITDA outlook range of $730 million-$745 million, which therefore remains unchanged.

We’ve updated our adjusted net income range to $351 million-$365 million to reflect the impact of increased interest expense resulting from our issuance of senior unsecured notes, which is offset in adjusted diluted EPS by the impact of share repurchases. As such, our adjusted diluted EPS outlook range of $4.62-$4.80 remains unchanged. Our expectation for the marketing fund to break even on a full year basis also remains unchanged. With respect to seasonality, we expect the funds to underspend by approximately $10 million-$15 million in the second quarter, bringing the first half underspend to approximately $0-$5 million, which we then expect will reverse in the back half of this year.

In closing, our first quarter results underscore the strength and appeal of our brands to guests, developers, and owners, as reflected in the meaningful recovery in U.S. RevPAR and continued growth in our system size and development pipeline. We’ve remained disciplined in our capital allocation approach, prioritizing investments in high return growth opportunities and digital technology advancements while consistently returning excess capital to shareholders. We’re confident that our resilient asset-light business model and strong balance sheet position us well to drive solid results in 2026 while providing clear visibility into our long-term growth trajectory. With that, Geoff and I would be happy to answer your questions. Operator?

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you, Mr. Tripathy. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, the floor is now open for your questions. If you do have a question or comment, please press star one on your telephone. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question.

We’ll go first this morning to Michael Bellisario with Baird.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho1: Geoff, good morning. Amit, congrats on the new role. Can we start big picture on the demand side? Is just 1st, sort of where and when did you begin to see the RevPAR improvement in the 1st quarter? 2nd part, how much of what you’ve seen through April is maybe actual underlying demand improvement versus maybe just easier year-over-year comparisons? Thanks.

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: We began to see it, Mike, really, as we talked about on our last call in January. We’re midway through February. The Q4 RevPAR, as we talked about in the script of down 8, was down 4 in January, and then it just jumped to +1% for February and March. April month to date is continuing with that same strong demand, that same February and March improved performance. We saw it specifically in states like Texas, which we talked about the combination of Texas, Florida, and California improving 800 basis points, but Texas alone was a 700 basis point improvement. It was up 2% year-over-year, which was great to see. We have 700 hotels in Texas, 2% up for the quarter.

That was a big deal. Improvement of course, in California and Florida. We saw it, as we talked about, across the Midwest, infrastructure states collectively, a big group of them, up 8%. We’re seeing corporate contracted in that everyday business pickup. Sequentially, it was both occupancy and rate. We saw non-government infrastructure pick up, oil and gas pick up. Our oil and gas market tracks, which are 12% of our room count, picked up by 400 basis points. You know, in terms of what we’re seeing now in April, if we just look at STR for the last 8 weeks, U.S. economy occupancy is running up 140 basis points to prior year.

That’s demand driven, with Wyndham’s economy brands outperforming over those last 8 weeks, the STR economy industry occupancy by 120 basis points. Our economy brands are continuing to drive rate index gains. We talked about on the last call, and we continue to see it, ADR being the biggest opportunity for our small business owners moving forward, especially in select service. Our economy and midscale brands continue to gain rate index. There’s a lot of runway ahead. We know that, you know, economy ADR has a long way to recover. It’s only up 11% to 2019 versus a higher end segment like luxury being up 30%.

As wage growth continues to outpace inflation and consumer confidence continues to stabilize, the pricing opportunity for our franchisees to catch up on both the demand side, which we’re seeing, and now looking forward on the rate side, is significant.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We’ll go next now to Brandt Montour with Barclays.

Brandt Montour, Analyst, Barclays: Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe we’ll just keep that thread going, Jeff. You know, if we were to sort of read between the lines in terms of business travel versus leisure travel, sequentially, it sounds like business travel might be driving a little bit more of the majority of the sequential strength. Maybe talk a little bit more on the leisure side. You know, do you feel like you’re seeing closer to home trends pick up? Do you think that you’re seeing tax refunds sort of more than offset sensitivity to gas prices? What are you kind of seeing near term in terms of in terms of like booking booking trends and booking window, the length of the booking window?

Any other sort of KPIs you look at on the leisure side would be helpful. Thank you.

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Sure. Thanks, Brandt. There is so much optimism out there in the U.S., both obviously on the U.S. development side, but on the consumer demand side, specifically, cancellation rates are improving. They’re getting better. Booking lead times are really solid, and the lengths of stay, interestingly, are getting longer. They’re up to prior year, and they’re up significantly, 540 basis points to where they were pre-COVID. We’re seeing guests drive a bit further than last year and drive a lot further than they were post-COVID with that revenge travel coming back. Whether it’s a C shape or an E shape economy with that middle tier of middle income consumers, our sweet spot, feeling better, they are regaining confidence in purchasing power. Our franchisees across the country are feeling it.

You referenced tax refunds. Those second half tax refunds absolutely have the potential to unlock further discretionary spending. US Travel published a research report earlier this month, which estimates that 1 out of every 9 dollars, 9% of the estimated $57 billion of tax refunds will be spent on travel. That middle income guests, US Travel believes, and their research shows, will drive 70% of that, meaning an extra 1 out of 9 on $57 billion, 70% of that $3 billion, $3.5 billion, $4 billion that their research estimates will be spent on domestic travel this year. Our internal consumer research shows that our middle income guests continue to express a higher intent to travel this year, certainly than they were at this point last year.

Wage growth, as we saw yesterday, is robust enough to support increased discretionary spending, which again, our small business owners are seeing. While Amit mentioned in his outlook comments that while we have limited back half visibility, we know our comps ahead get easier, and we’re expecting a stronger June. We’re expecting a stronger July with FIFA. Where we’re already seeing our hotels within 20 miles are pacing considerably ahead of prior year, which should contribute. We’re estimating about 20 basis points of uplift right there.

We have events planned for the Route 66 and the America 250 celebrations this summer and fall that have our here in this building, our PR, our sales teams, our marketing teams targeting drive to guests with mobile offers to boost room night demand across the hundreds and hundreds of our hotels along U.S. highways and byways like Route 66. It was more leisure to your question, but we, it was similarly, and we could save it for another question. Blue collar and infrastructure business, which is strengthening. Government showing signs of improvement. A lot of optimism out there with oil and gas and those markets that we’re in. There is a lot to be confident about.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We go next now to Steven Pizzella with Deutsche Bank.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho5: Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking our questions. Just wanted to follow up on AI. How have your initiatives benefited Wyndham and your owners? What have you seen in terms of increasing direct bookings, and what are the upside cases you are hearing for your owners in terms of additional ancillary spend?

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: A lot in there, Steve, it’s something what I was sitting with owners in Southeast Asia and the Pacific last month, it’s whether I was in New Zealand talking to a developer building La Quintas or in Singapore in a full-service hotel, there is nothing that they’re more excited about in terms of everything you asked in that question, incremental revenue and more direct bookings. I mean, AI is moving so quickly. Our whole AI forward sixth year, we’ve talked a lot about it on these calls, a $450 million investment that Scott Strickland and the team has led, has really accelerated our AI re-readiness. We are now 100% cloud-based. We’re fully optimized across all of our platforms with best-in-class partners like AWS and Salesforce, Oracle, Adobe.

The foundation is enabling us to launch products like we’ve talked a lot about, I won’t go into it, the Wyndham Connect AI with Canary. It’s in our investor deck, powered by OpenAI. That was launched 2 years ago, that gave us a very early lead in removing friction across the guest journey for franchisees. It delivered, to your question, commercial value to our owners, allowing them to focus more on hospitality. Because we’re deploying it at scale across all of our guest touch points, we’re no longer piloting. We’re driving up to, in an engaged full service hotel, up to a quarter of a million dollars of additional NOI, ancillary revenue. That is real money for those hotels. We’ve got engaged e-economy hotels driving $120,000 of incremental spend.

Incremental spend from guests, which is flowing straight through to their bottom line. Incremental mid-scale hotels driving $150,000 through that one product. It’s really exciting in terms of what it’s driving for them. And it’s certainly helping us. It was a big topic of conversation when we were at the AAHOA conference I referenced in my remarks today, in terms of what’s differentiating Wyndham from. In the select service space, their competitive sets to do business with us. We’re really excited about.

To your, to your direct contribution question, I think that’s for us the biggest benefit that as we roll this out, we talked about 1,100 hotels right now and rolling it out across the world with our Wyndham Connect PLUS product that’s also in the investor deck. We are taking millions and millions of dollars of costs out of those hotels’ front office. We’re taking millions of guest calls, millions of questions away from people that would have to answer them, and we’re autonomously handling those labor-intensive tasks that they no longer have to staff to. That’s what’s saving them money. It’s also resulting in better interactions with our guests. We have no dropped calls, faster handle times. Handle times have improved by 25%.

It’s that AI product that we’ve deployed that’s driving that we talked about in the script, 300 basis points of increased direct contribution to those franchisees, which they’re very excited about.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We go next now to David Katz with Jefferies.

David Katz, Analyst, Jefferies: Morning, everybody. Thanks for all the commentary and for taking my question. Just following on the AI, you know, theme, given the slides that you have in your deck and the amount of commentary put on it, do you have any statistics or any perspectives on, you know, customer uptake? You know, I think that’s obviously gonna be one of the gating factors for how much and how soon and how fast. How are you measuring that?

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Yeah. The incremental revenue upside that I’m talking about, David, is with Steven’s question, is the most immediate important measurement for our franchisees. I mean, we’re looking at everything that we could do to drive incremental revenue to their hotels. We’re looking at how much margin we could drive by taking a guest service agent, perhaps, you know, or a PABX operator, you know, off of their payroll, and allow them to free up staff for others. We’re looking at the percentage that we’re able to drive to the hotel from a direct booking basis because the call wasn’t dropped or it wasn’t lost.

That’s that 300 basis point KPI that we’re tracking right now for the 1,100 hotels. Only 1,100 so far of our 8,000 as we roll it across the world in 100 different languages that we’re looking at. Our job is to make sure that these small business owners are engaged with these tools that can drive hundreds of thousands of dollars, up to $100,000 maybe or over $100,000 in an engaged franchise economy hotel to a quarter of a million dollars in a very engaged Lake Buena Vista Palace in Orlando. That complex is just all over this and is really creative. We can’t underestimate the KPI for guest satisfaction. We’re continuing to see.

We’ve seen an uptick of 400 basis points in guest satisfaction because those calls are answered right away. I mean, we have that single source of truth where David Katz is booking a reservation, and we now know that autonomous agent now knows all about David. You know, before we did not. That front desk agent might not. We have that basic information that was not easily at their fingertips about what David and his daughter’s like, and not having to ask David to give us anything about him in terms of his loyalty, his booking behaviors.

These agents are able to answer any question imaginable that a guest might ask about his stay in moments, not minutes, and book the Katz family into their preferred room based on their past stay history, and then work to sell them a suite upgrade, an early check-in, a late checkout, or an F&B amenity package. All of this being done autonomously is just so exciting. We would not have had the time to do that before. It’s the revenue generator that we’re looking at. It’s the direct bookings because that call wasn’t dropped and you didn’t hop off onto a third party to book. It’s the increased satisfaction that we’re delivering for our guests at time of booking.

Then you just multiply that on, in terms of everything that we’re doing with the LLMs in terms of where we’re live today with Claude and OpenAI and Google, it’s really exciting. I mean, we’re scratching the surface with so many new initiatives underway that we’re not gonna talk about or disclose on this call, but we’re very well positioned as these platforms continue to evolve.

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: David, Good morning. If I could just add on your customer uptick and uptake question. You know, studies are showing that almost, you know, 40% of travel searches are coming through LLM. Really we wanna meet guests wherever they’re choosing to book and offer Wyndham hotels and their engagement through our Wyndham mobile app, through, you know, interacting with the property’s front desk and all of that, we’re seeing strong increases. Guests are definitely embracing it, and we’re right there to meet them.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We go next now to Dany Asad with Bank of America.

Dany Asad, Analyst, Bank of America: Good morning, Geoff and Amit. Congrats on the new role. My question for you is more on the ancillary side. Can you just help us understand the big drivers of that increase in the quarter? More importantly, I think, how should we think about that opportunity long term here?

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Good morning, Dany, and thanks. I’m, you know, excited to be in the new role. Ancillary, we had a strong quarter this year, you know, 21% year-over-year growth, primarily driven by the credit card program. As you kind of think about that, you know, we had guided to low to mid-teens for the full year. That’s still the outlook for the full year. Q1, the 21%’s really driven by lapping. You know, we renewed the credit card agreement with Barclays in March of last year. As you look at it for this quarter, we had a full quarter versus just 1 month last year. That’s really the lapping.

As far as the full year, you know, it’s still the low to mid-teens guidance that we provided and, you know, we’re excited about our continued growth in the ancillary side.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We go next now to Patrick Scholes with Truist Securities.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho3: Hi. Great. Good morning, everyone. I wonder if you’d give us a little bit more color on your performance out of China. Certainly across the industry and 1Q results, we’ve seen just a very wide volatility in RevPAR results out of China. You know, certainly STR sort of implied up low single digits. Some companies reported were doing up in the teens. You folks were at negative 5. A little bit more color on, you know, what drove the negative 5 versus, say, the industry where perhaps or what you know about the other companies. Then your expectations for the near to midterm for China. Thank you.

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Sure. Looking at the industry, looking at STR, we’ve talked about this before, Patrick, our brands in China were much like here in the U.S., the first to recover coming out of the lockdown. Looking at our overall RevPAR today versus where it was pre-COVID, we’re in line with STR. Certainly we wanna see that minus 5 become positive 5. Overall, China RevPAR did improve. It was 540 basis points of improvement from last quarter to this quarter. What was great to see was occupancy improving a full 12 points to being up 8% to prior year. ADR is still the issue over in China, continued deflation. The deflationary environment in China is the longest it’s been since a long, long time back in the sixties.

It is estimated to likely soon turn, and we’re looking forward to that RevPAR continuing to improve and get back to positive, which I think is our expectation for the full year. Occupancy is the big tailwind. It’s still trailing by a long margin where it was pre-COVID, but with PPI turning positive for the first time in 41 months at up 1%. With the government boosting service consumption and travel demand, visa-free entry and international inbound is a lot of our peers have been talking about as that picks up with increased flight capacity, we’re optimistic. Where we’re most optimistic in China is the continued growth on the development front.

Our Q1 NRG double digits for both our direct franchising system and our overall system with direct franchise signings up a solid 5%. We’ve increased our direct franchising business. We continue to grow it. It’s up 100% since spin. It’s sitting at about 100,000 rooms with over 400 hotels, direct hotels now in our pipeline. This accelerating double-digit net room growth is helping grow our international royalty rates. As we pivot from MLAs to direct franchising agreements, it’s at a significantly higher, three times higher royalty rate is what it was for Q1. We’re really pleased with how things are going in China. We’ve got strong direct development owner relationships.

12 of our 25 brands are now registered for sale in China. We’ve taken back these legacy MLAs like Days Inn, which has grown significantly since we did that. We’re growing across the capitals of Beijing and Shanghai. Our brand really resonates. Tech centers we talk about on every call, as we did this, the Elite Eight cities, great growth. We’re very proud of what our Chief Development Officer over there, Bill Wang and his team’s significant growth has been delivering and continues to deliver and achieve for us.

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: If I could just add on. You know, as Geoff mentioned, you know, we have recovered on pace with 2019 versus the industry. Patrick, I think you look at it, you know, we recovered ahead of the industry. We’re right now kind of in line with the industry. The recovery is just the timing of it. For the full year basis, you know, last year we were down, you know, 9%, as we said, you know, we expect to see that kind of like flat to positive growth this year. It’s really a huge sequential improvement year-over-year, almost 10% to get to that level.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We go next now to Ben Chaiken with Mizuho.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho: Hey, thanks for taking my question. Maybe on the U.S. demand front, you touched on it briefly earlier. I think in response to a previous question, you mentioned that leisure was improving, and then if I call you correctly, you also suggested that kind of like blue collar infrastructure was improving. Am I correct that that latter comment, infrastructure and blue collar was more of a forward-looking comment? Especially in states like Texas that are seeing rapid improvement, I guess how long do you need to see this stabilization improvement for that to eventually show up in, you know, pipeline or net unit growth? Thanks.

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Leisure was up about 100 basis points versus business in terms of improvement, we’re still seeing it improve. I mean, our overall infrastructure business that I touched on, Ben, while it was still down to prior year, improved 10 points sequentially from Q4. The non-government infrastructure revenue increased double digits in the first quarter, which helped our total business segment. If you think about 70% of our business being leisure, 30% being business, we were down 7% year-over-year for Q4, we were flat for Q1. Significant improvement. It helped boost our weekday occupancy, our weekday demand to flat for both February, March, we’re seeing that again in April. Piece of that is oil and gas and energy infrastructure spending.

That, as we talked about, increased impressively for Q1. In terms of forward-looking, our GSO consumed infrastructure revenue for the quarter grew 12% while the contracted infrastructure revenue, what’s on the books forward-looking, continues to pace well ahead of same time last year. The second part of the question, Amit, did you pick that up?

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Yeah. I think you were asking about, I think, Ben, about net rooms growth. I think if you look at it, even last year with the RevPAR backdrop that we had, you know, we had record openings in the U.S., just kind of underlying the strength of our brands and the performance. Really, our brands are resilient through periods of RevPAR cyclicality. Looking at this year, you see U.S. signings up, you know, 8%, global pipeline up, you know, to a record 259,000 rooms and 2,200 hotels. Yeah.

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Yeah.

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: We’re seeing continued growth.

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Amit’s former franchise sales team, now led by David Wilner, Jared Meabon, Brian Parker, and Brad Gant. They did not miss a beat as Amit was promoted, and they saw very strong momentum domestically. The 8% they signed more U.S. development contracts than last year. I think what impresses us all is how they are coming in for more upscale and more accretive rooms. Significant FeePAR premium growth at 30% above our U.S. system average. Yeah, we’re just thrilled right now with a pipeline that grew by, domestically, 300 basis points. It’s sitting at a record 110,000 rooms. Openings as well.

Opening 6,300 domestic rooms being in line with last year’s record Q1 openings, you know, all fueled by extended stay, which we know there’s gonna be a lot of demand in stabilizing economy base and increasing upscale executions, is something that we’re feeling good about.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We’ll go next now to Stephen Grambling with Morgan Stanley.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho4: Hey, thanks for taking the questions. On AI, do you find that all these benefits sound really encouraging? Do you find any difference in the impacts as we think about either property type or customer type, meaning high-end or low-end properties maybe have different impacts or leisure versus business customers, or even thinking through, different geographies? Thanks.

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: It really gets back to the engagement of the property in terms of what they could think of, Stephen, to market to the Gramblings. If you’re flying across the country and you’re arriving in on the West Coast, and it’s still early in the morning, it’s pretty easy to sell you that early check-in and amenity package to get you and the Grambling kids to their room. Obviously, the higher up the chain scales you move, there are increasing opportunities from what you could do with food and beverage in the hotels. I mean, that’s where we’re seeing a lot of our success in full-service hotels like the one I mentioned in Orlando, where you do have food and beverage outlets and experiences.

It’s just a really great opportunity from an incremental revenue standpoint for really all chain scales to drive. It’s most impactful, I think, to the small business owner that is able to, you know, drive something that’s in their minds really offsetting the rising labor costs and the rising brand fee costs and the rising distribution costs that obviously the whole industry always talks about. I mean, it’s a massive offset for them.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We’ll go next now to Daniel Politzer with JPMorgan.

Daniel Politzer, Analyst, JPMorgan: Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the question. You gave a little bit of color a few minutes ago on the development front. I was wondering if we could just kind of circle back there. How are you thinking about net rooms growth in the U.S. for this year, you know, and the potential to grow there? Can you maybe give a little bit more detail on the affiliate rooms that came out in the quarter and how we should think about that on a go-forward basis?

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: I mean, we had, as we previewed to all of you in February, affiliate rooms come out. The U.S. system was certainly pressured in Q1 with the outsized removal of what were legacy, Travel + Leisure rooms that they’ve talked a lot about publicly, and a legacy all the way back to our Wyndham Worldwide days of our Vacasa vacation rental affiliate room product, as that company was sold, which could always happen from time to time. When we look ahead with net room growth domestically, to the first part of your question, I mean, we had a record 72,000 room openings last year.

We had a big piece of that being domestic and, you know, on. As rooms open, they come out of the pipeline, but we also had the ability to really add to that pipeline, as I was just talking about, in terms of the team that Amit built by signing 8% more U.S. contracts than they did last year for those more upscale and accretive rooms. Our economy segment, which saw stabilization last year to a large degree. It still has room to go, but our economy rooms were up 4% on a gross additions basis. We were running a best-in-class economy retention rate still. That’s been stabilizing.

As we put more sellers on the street to sell new brands like our premium economy Dazzler Select brand that has so many competitive advantages going for it, like its lowest cost AI-enabled PMS CRS technology stack, able to drive the type of incremental revenues that we were just talking about. We’re looking forward to that domestically. Where we’re really seeing growth is in extended stay and midscale and above. Our extended stay pipeline is up over 4% year over year to a record 45,000 rooms in a segment where we know demand outstrips supply by 3 times and is going to for years to come.

We’re seeing really strong interest in our ECHO Suites extended stay product, our Hawthorn Suites extended stay product, and our upscale WaterWalk brand that its pipeline is up 2 times from last year on small numbers, but a lot of interest and a lot of demand. Our upper midscale and upscale brands are resonating in markets so often oversaturated with larger peer supply. We’re seeing good increases for our Wyndham Grand brand, our Dolces. We recently opened 3. It’s on the cover of our investor presentation we put out yesterday, and a good double-digit growth for our Registry Collection Hotels domestic pipeline.

With 85% of our pipeline in the U.S., either extended stay, mid-scale, upper mid-scale, upper up, or luxury, as we continue to push our system into higher FeePAR segments, we’re again feeling good. Our domestic pipeline at spin was a third of our total pipeline, and it’s now over 43% of our pipeline and growing.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We go next now to Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer.

Ian Zaffino, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Thank you very much. You know, question I guess would be on the RevPAR guide, kind of a lot of puts and takes here, right? We have fuel, we have tax refunds, we have the IIJA kind of finishing out here. We have the comments about, you know, your optimism. How do we kind of put that all together to kind of arrive at that RevPAR growth? If I could just sneak in one more about the credit card business. You know, how much runway do we have in that business? What’s the sustainability of it? Any other levers that you can pull or any initiatives that you plan to roll out going forward? Thanks.

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Hey, good morning, Ian. Thanks for the question. I’ll start with your RevPAR puts and takes. I think, you know, you kind of look at the Q1 outperformance relative to our expectations of -2% to -3%. You know, we’re 250 basis points ahead of that. That’s about, you know, 30 basis points on a full year global basis. Then, you know, Jeff kind of touched on April momentum and kind of continuation of the trends we’re seeing. That kind of, you know, we’re assuming those continue into the second quarter. We’re assuming about another 20 basis points from that, +1% in Q2 on our full year outlook.

That’s kind of how we got to the 50 basis points shift in the low end and the high end to kind of get to flat on the midpoint. As far as like the puts and takes, look, you know, we don’t have, you know the booking windows, they’re just over 2.5 weeks. They remain short. We certainly have a lot of catalysts, you know, FIFA and other things, but until we kind of get a good look at the peak summer season, you know, we don’t wanna predict what that’s gonna look like, so we’re being measured in what that is.

As far as your low end and high end, you look at, you know, Q1 was down -1%, for full year to kind of be there, you just assume the rest of the year is at -1%. To get to the high end of +1%, you basically need to make up the -1% you had in Q1. Assume, you know, like +1.5% for the rest of the year to kind of get to that. Your second question around credit card business. Look, you know, we are, credit card and loyalty really tie in well together. We had a very strong order on ancillary overall, that was largely driven by the credit card. Some of it was the lapping that I mentioned from Q1 of last year.

When you look at the sustainability of the credit card and the ancillary business as a whole, we have, you know, this year we’re projecting low to mid-teens for that. You know, long-term outlook for ancillary growth is, you know, kind of they call it the high single digits. There’s multiple catalysts within the credit card. You know, there is markets like Canada, where we have strong presence, as we previewed, we’re expanding into later this year. We’ve also got other markets, you know, Latin America and Asia, with strong Wyndham Rewards members and hotel presence that are also opportunities for that. You know, within ancillary, there’s others, you know, with some of the AI technology and other initiatives that can also kind of help fuel that growth.

Credit cards, we think there’s a long runway as well as these other things to kind of get us to a, you know, high single digits ancillary growth going forward. We also, you know, we launched a Wyndham debit card, which is we were the first in the industry to do that. Yeah, we feel very good about the prospects for ancillary growth going forward.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. We go next now to Meredith Jensen with HSBC.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho0: Yes, good morning. Quickly, I was hoping you could flip back to international and two quick points. You mentioned strength in Turkey, and I know that’s an important business for you all, and I was hoping to see if you’ve seen some sort of shifting of demand that could be, you know, sort of rather than trips not taken, trips taken with Wyndham elsewhere. Secondly, if you could just speak a little bit more about the plans for the Revo properties and how you might leverage that opportunity there. Thank you.

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Sure. I’ll start and Amit has been very involved and engaged on as it relates to Revo, and I’ll ask him to talk about the work that’s going on with our finance and legal teams. Yeah, Turkey, we are seeing, you know, just great demand and great growth and strong occupancy and demand growth throughout throughout the quarter and we think throughout the year to people, you know, looking for great places to vacation. We got a lot of hotels in Turkey right now. It’s growing. Certainly from a development standpoint, a pipeline standpoint, an opening standpoint, we’ve got growing royalty rates as our brand becomes more aware.

It’s a real bright spot for the European development team over there right now. Amit, you wanna talk about the update?

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Yeah. If I could just, kinda close out the Middle East, in Turkey, I think, Meredith, you know, Middle East represents only about We’ve got 50 properties there, really just 1% of our portfolio in terms of EBITDA. You know, Turkey has limited impact from the war that’s outside of the, you know, the Middle East. Overall, you know, Middle East, we don’t really see it having a huge impact. It obviously impacts our EMEA, but on a global basis, really not much of an impact. Turning to Revo, the owned hotel set, the 2 owned hotels in Europe that I mentioned in my prepared remarks, it was really kinda, you know, part of exercising all available remedies to recoup our investments.

We foreclosed and took ownership of two properties, you know, on our consolidator, on our books, about $36 million of gross value, about $23 million of net asset value. These properties are expected to contribute about $10 million in revenue, which is why we revised our outlook range to account for that. Really no earnings impact there. Our plan is to stabilize and improve profitability of these two assets as we kinda explore strategic options for them.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: We’ll go next now to Lizzie Dove with Goldman Sachs.

Lizzie Dove, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to go back to the U.S. rooms growth side of things. I know you’ve kind of flagged the 3,000 rooms lost from the TNL rooms, but it looks like it was a little lower than that this quarter. I’m curious just, you know, your expectations for making that up for the rest of the year and whether the expectation is still for U.S. rooms growth to be positive this year. Thanks.

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Yeah. Hey, Lizzie. Good morning. As you mentioned, the U.S., and our net rooms growth this quarter, that was primarily impacted by the affiliate rooms from TNL and Vacasa. The openings were generally in line with last year. It was really on that side. As we look ahead, as Geoff mentioned, you know, we feel very good about our development momentum across the U.S. portfolio. You know, new signings are up. U.S. pipeline is up 3%. You know, the other thing is that the rooms we’re bringing in are at a significant FeePAR premium to the rooms that are leaving the system in the U.S. You know, almost a full year, that delta was over 30%. We are seeing, you know, continued demands for our brands across really all segments.

We, we manage net rooms growth on a full year basis. Q1, as we previewed with you, was expected to be this way. You know, we look forward to kind of our development team executing the momentum that we have going on from 2025.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: I’m gonna go next now to Trey Bowers with Wells Fargo.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho6: Hey, guys. Thanks for sneaking me in. Just a, I guess a quick accounting question. The $114 million of reported royalty and franchise fees, do you guys mind just kinda providing a bit of a walk of without Revo and maybe kinda initial franchise fees, et cetera, what that number would look like on a more normalized basis? Thanks so much.

Amit Tripathi, Chief Financial Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Hey, good morning, Trey. Thanks for the question. Yeah, the royalties and franchise fees line item that you’re mentioning, you know, it has a couple components I’ll go through in sequence. About the first one on the royalty side, you know, about $3 million of that was related to the Revo fee deferral, which we had previously communicated, and we also had a little bit of higher D&A amortization just year-over-year, which kind of offset some of the RevPAR increase we saw in the first quarter. The other item that’s in there is franchise fees. You know, we’ve always said they’re not linear compared with our drivers. We had some outsized franchise fees in Q1 of last year that we noted at that time and really was lapping those in Q1 of this year.

On a full year basis or if you look at franchise fees in particular, like the cadence last year, it was front weighted and kind of reversed in the back half. We are kind of expecting the inverse this year to franchise fees. Aggregate, we expect, you know, the franchise fees to be down a few million for the full year, and Revo will have a $12 million impact on that line item on the full year as well. You know, both of which are already factored into our full year guidance and what we had kind of, you know, guided you guys to previously.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you. Gentlemen, it appears we have no further questions this morning. Mr. Ballotti, I’d like to turn things back to you, sir, for closing comments.

Geoff Ballotti, Chief Executive Officer, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Thanks, Bo, as always, thanks everyone for your questions and your interest in Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Amit, Matt, and I look forward to talking to and seeing many of you in the months ahead at many of the upcoming investor and industry conferences that we’ll be attending, like NYU’s IHIF on May 31st, later next month. In the meantime, have a great weekend ahead, and thanks for joining us.

Ben Chaiken, Analyst, Mizuho2: Thank you, Mr. Bellotti, and thank you, Mr. Sherpovy. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s Wyndham Hotels & Resorts first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.