Hyatt Hotels Corp. is looking to be an active player on the transactions market even after it completes its commitment to sell $2 billion in owned hotels later this month.
During the company's second-quarter earnings call, President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian said the company will continue to target "strategic partnership portfolio deals" or the acquisition of hotel brands or management platforms.
"We have both in the hopper at this point and have been working on several that we feel really good about," Hoplamazian said, adding he's not sure if any deals of that type will close before the end of the year.
Hyatt has done a significant amount of research into the right types of targets for acquisition, Hoplamazian said.
"We've actually applied a tremendous level of data and analytics to the markets that we believe would provide the biggest network effect," he said. "We've done it by price point and by brand segment, and we have then cross-matched that with a huge number of portfolios that we've identified and qualified across the globe. We did all that work in the third and fourth quarter of last year, and that's actually proven to be extraordinarily helpful in focusing our resources, our time and attention."
He said that process helped pave the way for the company's June acquisition of the Me and All Hotels brand from Germany-based Lindner Hotels.
Without identifying the specific property, Hyatt officials said they currently have a deal under contract to sell a hotel property for roughly $500 million. Such a sale would bring Hyatt across the finish line for the $2 billion commitment executives made in 2021 and bring the company up to $3.6 billion in hotels sold since committing to an asset-light business model in 2019.
So far this year, the company has sold the Park Hyatt Zurich, the Hyatt Regency San Antonio Riverwalk and the Hyatt Regency Green Bay.
Asked by analysts whether acquisitions will be used to right the hotel brand company's growth trajectory, Hoplamazian said any potential acquisition target must have "embedded growth already identified."
Hyatt recorded 4.6% net rooms growth in the quarter, and Hoplamazian pointed to an uptick in conversion activity and moderate improvements in the financing environment.
Hyatt had 18 new hotels with 3,251 rooms opened in the second quarter, including the Park Hyatt Changsha, Maison Métier in New Orleans, The Legend Paracas Resort, the first Hyatt Vivid Hotels & Resorts property — the Hyatt Vivid Grand Island — and several other firsts, including the first Caption by Hyatt hotels outside the U.S. in Osaka, Japan, and Shanghai, China. Hyatt's pipeline includes roughly 670 hotels with 130,000 rooms.
Second-Quarter Performance
Hyatt reported a 4.7% year-over-year increase in revenue per available room in the second quarter, with Chief Financial Officer Joan Bottarini pointing to strength in business travel and group demand as high points for the quarter.
Hyatt's quarterly performance echoed that of many of the international hotel brands this quarter, with relative weakness in China and a muted growth environment in the U.S. but strength in other international destinations. Revenue per available room was up 2.3% in the U.S. and down 3.2% in China for the quarter.
"RevPAR in the Americas excluding the United States increased approximately 9% with notable strength in Canada and South America, while all our all-inclusive properties in the Americas had net package RevPAR growth of 2% for the quarter," she said.
Bottarini said China was lapping a difficult comparison from the second quarter of 2023, when the country "saw a dramatic recovery for domestic travel and RevPAR surpassed pre-pandemic levels for the first time."
Chinese domestic travel was down 9% year over year in the quarter but outbound travel helped fuel outperformance in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, which saw 17.6% RevPAR growth.
Hyatt reported $1.7 billion in total revenues in the quarter, roughly flat from the year prior, and net income of $359 million.
The company downgraded its full-year guidance, now projecting RevPAR to grow between 3% and 4% after earlier projections of 3% to 5%. They maintained full-year net unit growth projections of between 5.5% and 6%.
As of publication time, Hyatt's stock was trading a $133.38 a share, up 2.6% year to date. The NYSE Composite was 7.1% for the same period.