Hyatt Hotels Corp

Good morning and welcome to the Hyatt First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star and one. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Adam Roman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Global FP&A. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to Hyatt's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me on today's call are Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Joan Botterini, Hyatt's Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I would like to remind everyone that our comments today will include forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, as described in our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other SEC filings. These risks could cause our actual results to be materially different from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued today, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today and will not be updated as actual events unfold. In addition, you can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in today's remarks under the Financials section of our Investor Relations website and in this morning's earnings release. An archive of this call will be available on our website for 90 days. Additionally, we posted an investor presentation on our investor relations website this morning containing supplemental information. Please note that unless otherwise stated, references to occupancy, average daily rate, and REVPAR reflect comparable system-wide hotels on a constant currency basis, and closed hotels in Jamaica are excluded from comparable metrics in 2026. Percentage changes disclosed during the call are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Adam, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge recent events in the Middle East. We are closely monitoring the evolving situation and remain in regular contact with our hotel teams, who've done a remarkable job of managing operations during trying times. And I'm extremely grateful for the professionalism and care with which my colleagues have conducted themselves throughout. The quarter also saw isolated security concerns in Mexico, and Hyatt colleagues, guests, and our hotels were thankfully unaffected. The safety of our guests and colleagues remains our top priority, and I'm proud of the care and resilience that our teams continue to demonstrate. At times like these, our purpose, to care for people so they can be their best, continues to guide our actions. Turning to operating results, this morning we reported first quarter system-wide REVPAR growth of 5.4%. Performance exceeded our expectations, driven by continued strength in our luxury brands globally. Repar growth in the United States was ahead of expectations, and we saw strong growth across most international markets. Leisure demand from premium customers was exceptionally strong in the quarter, increasing approximately 7% compared to last year, with the strongest demand realized by our luxury brands. Business and group travel was also solid, with business transient rev par up 2.4% in the first quarter and group rev par up nearly 4% compared to last year. Our core fee business remains durable, and our diverse global portfolio has proven resilient in the face of demand fluctuations, including certain macro and geopolitical disruptions. Our differentiated brands continue to deliver results over the long term. and reinforce our position as a preferred brand portfolio for guests. We continue to see this preference reflected in our World of Hyatt loyalty program. We ended the first quarter with approximately 66 million members, an increase of 18% compared to the first quarter of last year. And World of Hyatt members accounted for nearly half of total occupied rooms globally during the quarter. World of Hyatt's success goes beyond scale. we are focused on generating higher value demand. When our members stay with us, they spend nearly twice as much compared to a non-member, highlighting the engagement from our premium customer base. The value proposition of our loyalty program continues to resonate with our members, enhancing Hyatt's attractiveness to owners and developers. Development activity during the quarter was very strong. We ended the first quarter with a record development pipeline of approximately 151,000 rooms, up more than 9% compared to the first quarter last year. We continue to see strong interest in our newest brands, with owners recognizing the value of our brands and the strength of our commercial engine. In the first quarter, we signed a number of new franchise agreements across Hyatt Studios, Hyatt Select, and unscripted by Hyatt brands in the United States. and have many more in discussion. In total, the pipeline for new hotels in our essentials brand group increased nearly 25% compared to the first quarter of 2025. Outside the United States, our development engine is strong, with significant signings activity during the quarter. We're seeing broad interest across our brand portfolios throughout the world, reinforcing our confidence in our ability to drive durable, capital-efficient fee growth over the long term. We achieved net rooms growth of 5% for the first quarter of 2026, in line with our expectations as we lapped a quarter of outsized openings last year. We had several notable openings in our lifestyle brands, including the Andaz Lisbon, which strengthens our lifestyle brand presence in Europe, the Andaz Shanghai ITC, a luxurious and modern addition to our already strong brand presence in Greater China, and the Livingston, our first hotel in Brooklyn, New York. These openings reflect our continued focus on expanding our portfolio in high demand markets with differentiated offerings, with many exciting additions to our lifestyle portfolio slated to open in 2026, further strengthening our position as a leader in lifestyle offerings at scale. We also continue to see strong momentum in our essentials brands, entering seven new markets during the quarter. This included the expansion of our upper mid-scale portfolio, with several Yurkov by Hyatt openings, as well as the Third Heights Studios property in the US. These brands are an important driver of our growth strategy, allowing us to expand our brand footprint in markets where we have significant white space, while also offering attractive economic returns to owners. We expect our net rooms growth to accelerate over the course of the year as we benefit from meaningful opportunities to convert hotels into our system, along with openings from our pipeline. Now shifting to an update on transactions, we continue to make progress on the plan to sell Hyatt Grand Central New York and could be in a position to close that transaction in the fourth quarter of 2026 if various closing conditions are satisfied. We will continue to provide updates on this transaction as we reach key milestones. During the quarter, we elected to terminate the purchase and sale agreement for the sale of the Undoved London Liverpool Street. And separately, we are no longer under contract for two other properties that were previously signed. Our decisions not to move forward were specific to the individual transactions and reflect our continued discipline around pricing and terms. To be clear, Our broader plans for additional asset sales and our confidence in the transactions market remain unchanged. We remain active in the market and are in discussions regarding certain assets to further realize value from our own portfolio. Our approach remains consistent with our previous track record, ensuring we realize attractive values when we sell hotels and ensuring we execute transactions in a disciplined manner that retains the sole properties within our portfolio and increases shareholder value. As we look forward into 2026 and beyond, I'm confident about our future. We have significant competitive advantages that drove the strength in our core business in the first quarter. We are focused on elevating Hyatt so we can respond faster, innovate more, and perform at a higher level in an increasingly dynamic environment. At its core, elevating Hyatt and maximizing our potential comes down to three integrated areas working together, our brands, our talent, and our technology. Increasing brand equity is a key component of how we drive value for our stakeholders. Our sharpened brand focus strengthens differentiation, enhances the guest experience, and drives stronger performance across our portfolio. This makes Hyatt that much more attractive to owners and developers, supporting our expectations for long-term growth and growing free cash flow. Brands create the most value when they are executed consistently, and that comes down to our people. We are focused on developing leaders who can execute at a high level while continuing to innovate as enabled by our culture. We've built an organization grounded in quality, responsiveness, performance, and continuous improvement. Strong brands and great teams perform best when enabled by the right data and the right technology that we are leveraging to uncover deeper insights. These insights will allow us to better engage with our guests, support our colleagues, and enable faster, more informed decision making. We navigated a very dynamic quarter with several events requiring speed and responsiveness that our colleagues handled exceptionally well. I'm proud of our colleagues around the world who live our purpose every day. which I truly believe allowed us to deliver such strong quarterly results. I'll now turn the call over to Joan to provide more details on the quarter. Joan, over to you.