The road to global hotel recovery for Hilton has tight margins keeping owners and the company on track, according to CEO and President Chris Nassetta.
On an earnings call with analysts today to share fourth quarter and 2021 full-year results, Nassetta emphasized how Hilton “reengineered the way we run the business” during the past two years to realize “permanent margin improvement versus prior peak levels in the range of 400 to 600 basis points over the next few years.”
Nassetta and Kevin Jacobs, Hilton’s CFO and president of global development, underlined the focus the company placed on cost-cutting at the corporate and property levels over the last two years that were designed to be sustainable for the most part.
“It’s about being innovative with reengineering our food and beverage, and particularly breakfast offerings; looking at housekeeping; and then a bunch of little things,” Jacobs said about how the company approached this strategy with owners. “It’s going line item by line item and grinding through the [profit-and-loss statement] and standards with our owners to help the properties be more profitable through COVID and using that opportunity to make sure profitability and those efficiencies stand going forward.”
Service recovery will be the exception, Nassetta said, acknowledging that hotels and the company at the corporate level need to catch up on hiring and staffing.
Jacobs emphasized how driving revenue through an inflationary period can help owners ultimately get to a higher-margin business on the other side of the pandemic.
“Everyone knows what’s going on with inflation and wage inflation,” Jacobs said “But the flip side of that on inflation is that it helps on the revenue line. We reprice rooms every night. If inflation is a headwind on the cost side, it’s going to be a tailwind on the revenue side. The revenue base is bigger than the expense base, so that ought to lead to higher margins coming out the other side.”
Though it’s still unofficial, Nassetta said the company would reinstate its quarterly dividend to shareholders in the second quarter at $0.15 per share and begin buying back stock.
Performance Highlights
Systemwide comparable revenue per available room increased 104.2% and 60.4% for the fourth quarter and full year, respectively, compared to the same periods in 2020. Full-year RevPAR and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes and amortization were approximately 30% below peak 2019 levels, Nassetta said.
Compared to 2019, RevPAR was down 13.5% in the fourth quarter and 30% in the full year.
Systemwide average daily rate in the fourth quarter of 2021 was $137.29, up 35% over the same quarter in 2020 and down 2.6% from 2019’s fourth quarter ADR of $140.98.
The company reached systemwide occupancy of 61.3% for the quarter and 57.2% for the year.
Omicron weighed on regional hotel performance, most heavily in Asia-Pacific, specifically China, Jacobs said. Fourth quarter RevPAR fell 24% in China compared to the same quarter in 2019 due to COVID-related restrictions.
The Middle East and Africa region was the fourth quarter standout in terms of performance, notching 124% RevPAR growth over 2020, and 7% growth over 2019 levels.
Nassetta said the Middle East region leads COVID-19 recovery globally, but he believes the U.S. is next.
“My belief is you will see in the second quarter a transition and then a very rapid recovery,” he said.
Segmentation
Nassetta said omicron had a dampening effect on business-transient travel in the fourth quarter but added strong leisure travel over the holiday season “drove U.S. RevPAR to more than 98% of 2019 levels in December.”
Nassetta said small, social group events have significantly helped in the recovery of group business. RevPAR for that segment reached “roughly 70% of 2019 levels” in the fourth quarter, driven by that smaller business as larger corporate group business continued to lag.
Omicron-related disruption to group travel likely will be contained to the first quarter of 2022, Nassetta said, adding that underlying group demand remains strong compared to 2019.
“Our tentative [group] booking revenue is up more than 25% and meeting planners are increasingly more optimistic, with forward bookings trending up week over week since early January,” he said.
Development Highlights
Hilton hit a new room-opening record in 2021, adding 414 properties and 67,100 rooms during the year, with conversions representing 20% of openings. Net unit growth of 5.6% surpassed the company’s high end of its guidance, and Jacobs said he expects it will take “two or three years” to get back to the company’s pre-pandemic norm of 6% to 7% annual net unit growth.
This year, Nassetta said Hilton expects 5% net unit growth.
Nassetta and Jacobs underscored the importance of net unit growth over time when it comes to increasing margin through growth.
The company ended 2021 with 408,000 rooms in its development pipeline, a 3% rise over 2020 numbers. That pipeline represents 38% of the company’s existing supply.
Jacobs addressed a question from an analyst about whether the company’s approach to adding key money to Hilton development deals had changed, and Jacobs replied that while 2021 was somewhat of an exception, the company’s overall philosophy was the same.
“It’s been higher this year than it has in the past, but … it’s a competitive environment out there,” he said. “But our number of deals that have key money associated with them is about 10%, which it was pre-COVID.”
What bumped that up in 2021 were what Jacobs called “very strategic” deals the company had been working on for a long time, like Resorts World Las Vegas, which opened in June.
“We have some strategic things in the hopper at the moment that I think might keep that number a little bit elevated over the course of 2022 and maybe even for a little while beyond that,” he said.
At press time, Hilton’s stock was trading at $157.32 per share, up 0.85% year to date. The NYSE Composite Index was down 2.4% for the same period.
Editor’s note: Chris Nassetta serves on Hotel News Now’s parent company CoStar Group’s board of directors.