Hyatt Hotels Corp

Good morning and welcome to Hyatt's second 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, press star one again. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Ryan Knuckles, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome to Hyatt's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me on today's call are Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Joan Bottarini, Hyatt's Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I'd 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 financial 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 post an investor presentation on our Investor Relations website this morning containing supplemental information. Please note that otherwise stated references to occupancy, average daily rate, and REVPAR reflect comparable system-wide hotels on a cost and currency basis. And closed hotels in Jamaica are excluded from comparable metrics in 2026. Percentage changes disclosed during the call on a year-over-year basis was otherwise noted. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Ryan, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. Before I begin, I'd like to once again thank everyone who joined us at our recent investor day, both in person and virtually. We appreciated the strong engagement throughout the event and the thoughtful conversations we've had with many of you since then. It's been encouraging to hear the positive feedback on our strategy and the long-term opportunities that we outlined. As we showcase that investor day, Hyatt has evolved into a more asset light company with a differentiated operating model built around premium brands, a growing commercial platform, and disciplined capital allocation. Our objective is clear. to sustain a business model capable of delivering durable fee growth, increasing cash flow, and attractive long-term returns over a wide range of operating environments. Our second quarter results provide another example of that model in action. Despite meaningful regional headwinds in parts of our portfolio, we delivered strong REF PAR fee and adjusted EBITDA growth, expanded World of Hyatt membership, and increased our development pipeline to record levels. These results demonstrate the growing strength of Hyde's commercial platform, the increasing preference for our brands among guests, owners and developers, and the benefits of a business model where quality growth translates into higher fee earnings and free cash flow. Turning to our operating results, this morning we reported second quarter system-wide REF PAR growth of 5.9%, exceeding our expectations. Performance was driven by durable demand from high-end travelers and continued strength across our luxury portfolio, with some benefit from the FIFA World Cup. RevPar growth in the United States exceeded our expectations, and we also saw strong growth across most international markets. RevPar was up in all customer segments. Business and group travel was solid, with business transient RevPar increasing approximately 2% during the quarter, and Group RevPar increasing more than 7% compared to last year. World Cup host cities delivered Group RevPar growth of more than 13% in June. Leisure demand from premium travelers remained exceptionally strong during the quarter, with Leisure Transient RevPar increasing approximately 7% compared to last year, once again led by our luxury brands. As one example, World Cup host cities in the United States generated leisure transient REVPAR growth of more than 17% in June. Our performance reflects much more than favorable industry trends. Our brand-led strategy continues to differentiate Hyatt, and we are gaining market share across our portfolio. During the first half of the year, our luxury and lifestyle portfolios increased REVPAR index by nearly three points, with a large proportion of our hotels gaining share. This reflects growing preference for our brands, the strength of our commercial platform, and the impact of our brand-focused approach. A significant contributor to that growing preference is World of Hyatt, which ended the quarter with approximately 69 million members, an increase of 17% from a year ago. As World of Hyatt membership and engagement grows, we're continuing to enhance the value of the program. One recent example is our collaboration with Air Canada, which brings two highly engaged loyalty programs together and gives members more ways to earn and redeem rewards while expanding the experiences available across both networks. World of Heights sits at the center of our network effect, creating more value for guests, owners, and developers as our system grows. Every new hotel we add expands opportunities for our members. Well, every new member strengthens the value of our commercial platform. The lasting benefits we create by driving quality growth fuels more direct channel demand, stronger owner returns, and durable fee growth. Development activity remained very strong during the quarter. We ended the quarter with a record development pipeline of approximately 154,000 rooms, up 10% from a year ago. The breadth of our pipeline reflects growing owner preference for Hyatt. Our luxury, lifestyle, and inclusive collection brands continue to generate strong owner interest while our essentials brands are building momentum and creating meaningful opportunities to expand Hyatt's brand footprint in markets where we have significant white space. The Hyatt Select brand is a great example of that momentum. During the quarter, in addition to strong signings in the United States, We signed a master franchise agreement with Dosen Group to bring the Hyde Select brand to the Chinese mainland. This collaboration combines Hyde's global brand recognition with the local market expertise and development capabilities of Dosen Group, one of the region's leading hotel operators, providing a strong platform to thoughtfully scale the Hyde Select brand in an important long-term growth market. We delivered NetRoom's growth 4.4% for the second quarter, excluding rooms from the Playa Hotels acquisition that were removed from Hyatt's room count in the second half of 2025. Among our notable openings this past quarter were Miraval the Red Sea, our first Miraval property outside of the United States, and the Burai Hua Hin, our first property in the Undone collection by Hyatt in Thailand. Both of these openings expand our brand presence in the luxury wellness segment while bringing two distinctive experiences to World of Hyatt members in sought after destinations. Miraval the Red Sea is the first of a number of important openings planned in Saudi Arabia over the next several years. Our development pipeline remains very healthy and we expect net rooms growth to accelerate significantly over the second half of the year with a large number of our expected openings scheduled for the fourth quarter. We continue to see meaningful opportunities from both conversions and new build openings. We've adjusted our full year outlook range to reflect the large number of fourth quarter openings, some of which could slip into 2027. I want to be clear, our confidence in delivering on the strong organic growth we outlined in our investor day remains very high. Now turning to transactions, We continue to make progress on the planned sale of the Hyatt Grand Central New York. However, based on our current expectations, we no longer expect the transaction to close in 2026. We will continue to provide updates on this transaction as we reach key milestones. More broadly, we remain active in the market and are in discussions regarding the sale of certain assets to unlock additional value from our own portfolio. Our disciplined approach remains consistent with our track record of pursuing transactions that achieve attractive values while ensuring our hotels remain in the Hyatt system under long-term management or franchise agreements, supporting continued fee growth and shareholder value. Looking ahead, we remain confident in Hyatt's long-term positioning. As we highlighted during Investor Day, we've transformed Hyatt into a more durable asset-light business. that generates increasing free cash flow as our system grows and cash conversion improves, allowing us to continue to invest in the areas of the business that matter most to our guests, owners, and shareholders. Our strategy is producing tangible results. We've led the industry in net rooms growth for the past nine years, delivered industry-leading REF PAR growth over the past five years, and today generate the highest fees per room among our largest peers. Together, these drivers have created a powerful compounding effect on fee growth. Importantly, achieving that growth requires only modest incremental capital, allowing us to reinvest in our brands, commercial platform, and future growth, while continuing to generate increasing levels of free cash flow. We also believe the opportunity ahead remains significant. We've built a differentiated portfolio of brands serving high-end travelers, developed one of the industry's most attractive and fastest growing loyalty programs and continue to see substantial opportunities to expand our brands in markets where Hyatt has meaningful white space. Together, we believe these advantages position Hyatt to deliver durable long-term growth and consistently create value for shareholders. I'd like to close my comments by thanking our Hyatt colleagues around the world who bring our purpose of care to life every day. Their commitment to our guests, owners, and one another is what truly differentiates Hyatt and gives me great confidence in our future. I'll now turn the call over to Joan to provide more details on the quarter. Joan, over to you.