Infrastructure Business Travel Boosts Wyndham

Solid demand from Wyndham Hotels & Resorts’ “everyday business travelers” even amid the Covid-19 omicron variant’s U.S. spread helped boost the hotel company to a strong fourth quarter, executives said during a Wednesday earnings call.

Wyndham specifically highlighted what it called “infrastructure accounts,” a sector that president and CEO Geoffrey Ballotti during the call said “represents the majority of our domestic business segment, contributed over 10 percent more revenue to our hotels in the fourth quarter than in 2019 and made up half of the newly negotiated business accounts that our sales team signed this year.”

That sector, along with the strong leisure segment, helped boost Wyndham’s revenue per available room throughout the quarter, even after the omicron variant began its spread. “Our December RevPAR in the midst of the omicron surge was the strongest demand month of the quarter, growing 15 percent domestically” from 2019 levels, he said.

Extended-Stay Launch Plans

Wyndham expects continued strength in the U.S. infrastructure business travel segment throughout 2022 due in part to the November 2021 passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. To further target the blue-collar business travel segment, Wyndham plans to unveil its first economy-tier extended-stay brand this spring, Ballotti said.

Details were few, but Ballotti said Wyndham has been designing “over the past year in consultation with several of the industry’s most experienced extended stay developers.”

The extended-stay sector, and particularly its economy tier, has proven resilient throughout the pandemic, and Ballotti said it’s a segment for which business demand should remain high.

“Our developers are asking for an economy extended stay brand, our franchisees are asking for it. And most importantly, our corporate accounts are asking for it,” Ballotti said. “We know that there are over 10 million construction workers out there that travel every week. And we also know that relocation and long-term assignments are going to continue to pick up. We’re going to see, we feel, millions of more essential workers hitting the road with the coming Infrastructure Bill. … These are our business accounts.”

Q4 Performance Results

Wyndham’s fourth quarter 2021 net revenue totaled $392 million, up from $296 million year over year but down from $492 million in 2019. Net income totaled $48 million, compared with a net loss of $7 million one year prior.

Systemwide fourth-quarter RevPAR increased 52 percent year over year on a constant-currency basis to $35.99. U.S. RevPAR increased 58 percent to $43.84. Wyndham projected full-year 2022 RevPAR growth of 12 percent to 16 percent year over year.

The company’s development pipeline on Dec. 31, 2021, included more than 1,500 properties and more than 190,000 rooms, up about 5 percent year over year.

Chris Davis www.businesstravelnews.com