RLJ Lodging Trust

and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If anyone should require operator systems during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the call over to Nikhil bala, RLJ senior vice president, finance and treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to RLJ lodging trust. I am Nikhil bala. On today's call, Leslie Hale, our president and chief executive officer, will discuss key highlights for the quarter. Sean maoni, our executive vice president and chief financial officer, will discuss the company's financial results. Tom bard net, our chief operating officer, will be available for Q&A. Forward-looking statements made on this call are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that may lead the company to make a mistake. We have the actual results to defer materially for what had been communicated. Factors that may impact the results of the company can be found in the company's 10Q and other reports filed with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements. Also, as we discuss certain non-GAAP measures, it may be helpful to review the reconciliation to GAAP located in our press release. I will now turn the call over to Leslie.

Thank you, Nekhil. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased that our momentum from last year has continued with our first quarter results once again exceeding the industry. These results were in line with our expectations, which anticipated the impact of the holiday shift in March. Against this backdrop, we were encouraged to see urban markets once again lead the way for the overall industry. During the first quarter, in addition to delivering the growth of our revenue, we Revpart growth and growing our Revpart index, we executed on a number of fronts, including making progress on our next wave of conversions, expanding our pipeline of conversions with the acquisition of the Wyndham-Boston Beacon Hill, executing multiple high return ROI projects, and taking steps to further ladder our debt maturities. Overall, our relative out performance during the first quarter continues to demonstrate our multiple channels of growth. With respect to our operating performance, our first quarter Revpart increased by 1% over last year, primarily driven by an increase in occupancy. As we expected, our growth was constrained by the shift of Easter into March, which muted citywide and other group activity during the most significant month of the quarter. Additionally, cold and rainy weather in California and south Florida negatively impacted these markets during the quarter. In light of this, we were pleased by our portfolio's Revpart growth, which out performed the industry by 80 basis points, and we also gained 110 basis points of market share, underscoring the growth profile of our portfolio. The growth in our portfolio was broad-based, with a number of our urban markets achieving mid to high single-digit Revpart growth. Urban markets are continuing to benefit from robust group activity, improving inbound demand, increasing international demand, and most notably, the steady improvement in corporate travel. From a segmentation perspective, our business transient revenues outpaced our other segments during the quarter, with BT achieving revenue growth of 13%, driven by a balanced contribution between occupancy and ADR. The recovery of business transient is benefiting from continued strength and travel from SMEs in addition to the broadening of corporate travel across industries such as consulting, technology, and financial services, which is being aided by the return to work office mandates. This improving corporate demand enabled our midweek Revpart to grow by .4% during the quarter. Relative group demand, the strong booking momentum from last year continued during January and February, which achieved robust revenue increases of 10% and 9% respectively. The strength of demand led our group ADR to increase by approximately 3% during the first quarter, despite a soft march. We expect group demands remain strong for the remainder of the year as evidenced by our full year pace at 106%, with the third and fourth quarters being the strongest of this year. Leisure demand remains healthy, as demonstrated by our leisure revenues increasing by 2% during the first quarter, driven primarily by the strength of our urban leisure, which increased by 3%. Urban leisure continues to be bolstered by a robust volume of social events such as concerts and sporting events. Additionally, over spring break, our leisure also benefited from our suite mix, which represents 50% of our portfolio. Our top line growth was amplified by our .7% growth in our out of room spend, which was driven by the continuing success of our ROI initiatives, leading to total revenue growth of 3.1%. We are also encouraged by the improving operating expense landscape, with the growth of cost per occupied room continuing to decelerate. Our top line growth translated to hotel EBITDA margins of 27.4%. From a capital allocation perspective, we are seeing strong returns from our investments. During the first quarter, our conversions in Charleston, Mendeley Beach, and Santa Monica achieved .5% report growth. The strong ramp that these properties are achieving further bolsters our confidence and our ability to unlock significant value in our next wave of conversion. We remain on track to complete the conversion of a Doubletree Houston Medical Center, Hotel Tonel in New Orleans, and the Bankers Alley in Nashville this year. Additionally, we are advancing on the planning of our conversion of the -Pittsburg University Center to a courtyard and the Renaissance Pittsburgh to Marriott's autograph collection, both of which will be delivered in 2025. During the first quarter, we expanded our pipeline of conversion opportunities by acquiring the fee simple interest in the Wyndham-Boston Beacon Hill. We have made great progress with our plans to unlock the embedded value at this hotel, which sits in an irreplaceable A-plus location surrounded by Mass General Hospital that is undergoing a $1.8 billion expansion. We remain confident that we can unlock over 40% of EBITDA upside following the repositioning of this property. We expect this property to be included in our next phase of conversions and will give more color later this year. In addition to our large-scale conversions, we are unlocking additional embedded value across our portfolio by also providing a new space for our residents and by prioritizing our investments in markets poised to outperform. Since the beginning of the year, we have been executing on a number of high-return ROI projects to increase -of-room spending by reimagining and optimizing non-revenue generating space. For example, at the Residence Inn in Bethesda, we took advantage of our rooftop with CityViews to create a new bar and entertainment space. At the Embassy Suites LAX, we created a new functional social and small group meeting space. At the DoubleTree Austin, located adjacent to the State Capitol, we added new guest rooms and elevated the lobby bar. At the DoubleTree Suites Orlando at Disney, we reimagined the lobby to incorporate a new, very profitable market. And at the Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach Resort, we created a new indoor-outdoor oceanfront bar and added a new profit center in the form of a sundries market. Our group mix and banquet and catering revenues are already seeing the benefit of these space reconfiguration projects. We expect these ROI projects to continue to ramp through the remainder of this year and contribute to our total revenues achieving growth ahead of RevPAR. In addition to our internal investments, our pipeline of external growth opportunities has continued to build. Our competitive advantage as an all-cash buyer is enabling us to build an actionable pipeline. That said, we will continue to maintain our discipline as we have demonstrated. As we look ahead, we are cognizant of the macroeconomic uncertainty that exists. However, we remain constructive on the outlook for lodging fundamentals for the rest of the year. Our outlook is supported by the continued momentum in the recovery of business transient, the outsized growth trends in urban markets, especially those with healthy city-wides, and leisure attractions and special events and exposure to inbound international travel. We believe that the momentum in these segments should allow urban markets to continue to outperform the industry. For the second quarter, we expect RevPAR growth to sequentially improve from the first quarter. May is forecast to be the strongest month of the quarter, given robust city-wide activity in a number of our markets such as Boston, Washington, D.C., Southern California, as well as our Louisville market, which will benefit from the 150th anniversary of the Kentucky Derby. As we move into the second half of the year, we expect RevPAR growth to strengthen further due to city-wide calendars and the location of many large-scale events. This will be favorable to our portfolio given our footprint in markets such as Boston, which should continue to benefit from city-wise in addition to robust business and international travel supported by the growth in financial services, biotech, and education. Southern California should benefit from a healthy city-wide calendar, growth from our conversions in Santa Monica and Mandalay Beach, and improving business transient demand from aerospace and a backlog of demand from Hollywood-related industries, as well as increased inbound international travel, especially from Asia. And Washington, D.C. will benefit from a strong city-wide calendar in the second half of the year. Collectively, this should allow us to continue to exceed industry growth. Longer term, we remain optimistic about the trajectory of lodging fundamentals, which should benefit from growth in all segments of demand, given the ongoing consumer preferences towards experiences, especially against the backdrop of an elongated period of limited new supply. Relative to these dynamics are the fact that our urban-centric portfolio is well positioned. I will now turn the call over to Sean. Sean.

Thanks, Leslie. To start, our comparable numbers include our 96 hotels owned throughout the first quarter. Our reported corporate adjusted EVDA and FFO include operating results from all sold and acquired hotels during RLJ's ownership period. As Leslie said, we were pleased to report solid first quarter operating results, which were in line with our expectations and demonstrated the strength of our high-quality, urban-centric portfolio. Our first quarter rep bar growth of 1% was driven by a .2% increase in occupancy, which was slightly offset by a .1% decline in ADR. First quarter occupancy was 69.3%. Average daily rate was $199, and our weekly weekly rep bar was $138. As was noted, our business transient and midweek out performed. First quarter business transient rep bar grew .6% above 2023, including ADR growth of 5% and occupancy growth of 7%. The strength in business transient was demonstrated by our weekday rep bar growth of .4% above 2023, which was primarily Rep bar growth remained healthy in many of our urban markets, including Boston at 12%, Houston CBD at 9%, Indianapolis at 17%, San Francisco at 5%, San Diego at 8%, and New York at 5%. Monthly rep bar growth during the first quarter was .8% in January, .5% in February, and declined .9% in March, primarily due to Easter timing. Total first quarter revenue growth benefited from continued -of-room spend and increased .1% for the first quarter, including .2% in January, .1% in February, which benefited from an extra leap year day, and declined .3% in March. Turning to the current operating cost environment, inflationary pressures continued to normalize during the first quarter. On a per-occupied room basis, total hotel operating cost growth was limited to 2.9%, which was 50 basis points lower than fourth quarter, underscoring the benefits of our portfolio construct and our initiatives to redefine our operating cost model. Drilling down further into hotel operating expenses, fixed costs such as insurance and property taxes were the most significant driver of the -over-year increases in hotel operating expenses, increasing 15% during the first quarter. The increases in fixed costs are impacting most industries and are not specific to the lodging industry. We are encouraged by the improving trends in our more controllable, bearable hotel operating costs, which grew 4% above 2023, or only .6% on a per-occupied room basis, and represented sequential improvement of 210 basis points and 70 basis points respectively from the fourth quarter. There are many factors that influence these positive results, with the most significant contributors being the successful restructuring of many of our third-party operating agreements and our lean operating model. During the first quarter, our portfolio achieved Hotel Ibiza of $88.9 million and Hotel Ibiza of $27.4%. We were pleased with our operating margin performance, which was only 152 basis points lower than the comparable quarter of 2023, despite continued cost pressures. Turning to the bottom line, our first quarter adjusted EBITDA was $79.6 million and adjusted FFO per diluted share was 33 cents. We continue actively managing our balance sheet to create additional flexibility in the capital and further lower our cost of capital. Early in the second quarter, we addressed our 2024 maturities. Today, our balance sheet is well positioned, with $400 million available under our corporate revolver. Our current weighted average maturity is approximately 3.4 years, and 88 of our 96 hotels are unencumbered by debt. We ended the first quarter with an attractive weighted average interest rate of .29% and 82% of debt either fixed or hedged. As it relates to our liquidity, we ended the quarter with approximately $350 million of unrestricted cash, $600 million of availability on our corporate revolver, and $2.2 billion of debt. With respect to capital allocation, we remain committed to returning capital to shareholders through dividends while investing in ROI projects and opportunistically buying back shares and selectively pursuing acquisitions. Our current quarterly common dividend is $0.10 per share, which is well covered and supported by our free cash flow. We will continue making prudent capital allocation decisions to position our portfolio to drive results during the entire lodging cycle while monitoring the financing markets to identify additional opportunities to improve the laddering of our maturities, reduce our weighted debt, and increase our overall balance sheet flexibility. Turning to our outlook, based on our current view, we are reaffirming our full year 2024 guidance that assumes the continuation of the current operating and macroeconomic environment. For the full year 2024, we still expect comparable rep bar growth between .5% and 5.5%, comparable hotel Evida, between $395 million and $425 million, corporate adjusted Evida, between $360 million and $390 million, and adjusted FFO for diluted share between $1.55 and $1.75. Our outlook assumes no additional acquisitions, dispositions, refinancings, or share repurchases. We still estimate 2024 ROJ capital expenditures will be in the range of $100 million to $120 million net district expense will be in the range of $91 million to $93 million, and cash corporate GNA will be in the range of $35 million to $36 million. With respect to the second quarter, we expect our rep bar growth to be below the midpoint of the full year outlook range due to softness in April rep bar given the negative impact of Passover on group demand during the second half of the month. Finally, please refer to the supplemental information, which includes comparable 2023 quarterly and annual operating results for our 96 hotel portfolio. Thank you, and this concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the line for Q&A.

Operator? Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Your first question comes from Michael Belisario with Baird. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. First question is for Sean on the debt market. Why use the line of credit versus something more permanent to repay the CNBS loan that was maturing? Maybe just high level, what was the basic philosophy there and economic benefit of doing so?

Sure. Thanks, Mike. We, in short, the answer is that the line draw was the most efficient source of capital that we had. We ran a process and obtained quotes from multiple debt sources during the first quarter. And we concluded while the other markets are open and actually efficient from an overall cost of debt and cost of borrowing and the line which still has three years remaining of initial tenor and was recast last year was the most efficient use of capital. It would save us on an annual basis several million dollars of interest rate savings by doing that. I think as we look forward, we acknowledge that the line was a vehicle in light of the current financing markets. We will look to perm out that financing sometime later this year or early next year is how we're thinking about it. But it's going to be based on how the credit markets evolve. But we preserved our optionality to do that.

Understood. That's helpful. And then just switching gears, maybe a bigger picture question on CapEx. First on the recurring front for properties, maybe where are costs today? How much have they moved versus either 2019 levels or compared to a year ago, for example? How are you thinking about when and where to renovate? And then similarly for your conversions, are renovation costs being higher, impacting your underwriting or return expectations at all? Thanks.

Hey, Mike, we'll tag team on this question. I would say that on the renovation side, I actually find your question interesting. I would say a year ago we were eating into our contingency on most projects and that more recently in the last three quarters or so, we've been getting our contingency back, which means that the cost of renovations have stabilized from a standpoint of inflationary pressures around inputs and labor relative to our renovation pool. So we feel good about the way we've been estimating and how they've been performing.

And the things that are driving that is obviously the supply chain and inflationary impact has waned is one. The second is that our contractors and subcontractors are more hungry today, right? The labor issues that they dealt with with getting bodies back technologies in place has waned which has allowed them to be much more competitive in how they're bidding. And then third, we've been able to leverage our scale from our design and construction team such that we are a preferred bidder, if you will, for this work. And so we've used all of those things, which has translated into lower costs for our

renovations. And lastly, Mike, the choices in regards to where we've spent dollars. We've spent dollars on the construction of markets and where we've really allocated dollars is where we see ROI opportunities, not just the conversions, but those atrium revolution opportunities where we can create meeting space and have more banquet sales in addition to group mix. So that's where we were thinking about allocating dollars. And I think you'll see that in our ROIs as we continue to have growth above and beyond just the conversions that we're doing. Yeah,

and then I think we've outlined on prior calls that we go through a very robust prioritization of spend on our conversions. We have a very similar process for renovations to Tom's point around prioritizing renovation dollars in the highest return markets. The other thing is that we've been capturing the trend around activity that's going to drive -of-room spend. As you've seen that in our first quarter results and our results last year, we are continuing to prioritize capital that is going to maximize -of-room spend because we think that has tremendous returns associated with it.

That's all helpful. Thank you.

Next question, Tyler Battori with Oppenheimer and Company. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I really want to dive into the commentary on April and what you're seeing Q2 overall. Sorry if I missed that. Can you tell us what April RevPAR was? It sounded like from the commentary, April, maybe a comp issue, maybe something going on with group business, but there's a lot of concern in the market about just the health of the consumer broadly and what's going on with leisure travel. If you could just touch on what you're seeing right now, just kind of help us think about a little bit more what's driving some of the softness in April.

Sure. So there's a lot impacted in your question, Tyler, so I'm going to try to address it all. First let me just say this more broadly, which is that we're not seeing anything today that changes our view of the cadence for the year. And so your question on April. Our April, we're still closing the book, but it's going to be sort of flat to slightly down. But you really have to deconstruct April. And if you look at the first half of April, April was relatively strong, all the segments performed well. When you look at the back half of April, group was clearly impacted by Passover, and that obviously had an impact on us for the month of April. But we don't believe based on how the first half of the month performed, there's any read through on underlying fundamentals. And when we deconstruct the actual performance of April, we see in our preliminary numbers that demand is actually up. Rate was down, and that makes sense because group is our highest rate of segment today, and that's what was impacted. But when we look at the cadence for the year based on the current trends we see, there's no change in our view. We still expect Q1 to be the slowest quarter of the year. We expect Q2 to be better than Q1. As we mentioned in our prepared remarks, we do expect Q2 to be below the midpoint of our range because of April, but we are seeing the trends shaping up from May for reacceleration based on May's normal pattern but also because of our footprint. We talked about in prepared remarks number of markets like Louisville which is going to benefit from the Kentucky Derby. Tom can give some more color in some other markets. And then we expect June to be as healthy as well as we move into the summer. When we look at group, third and fourth quarter are expected to be the strongest quarters for us, and so we still expect the same strength in the back half of the year as we had at the beginning of the year on that. What I would say though is that we're very sober about your point on the consumer. The fact of the matter is that the Fed is trying to slow the economy. We see that reflected in the lower end of the consumer spectrum, whether it's in the form of their spending, their credit, and what's happening in the economy sector for hotels. If the Fed is successful in slowing the economy, travel will not be immune to the impact of that. Having said that, we're not seeing it in our numbers and the trends that we see today, and that's also supported by the fact that the Fed didn't take an action most recently on that. In terms of what we are seeing, we are seeing BT continue to steadily improve. It was up 12 points for us in the first quarter. We're seeing group remain strong or paces at 106% with third and fourth quarter being the strongest months on that. We're seeing urban leisure remain strong. Our leisure was up 2% in the first quarter. Urban leisure was up 3% relative to that. So we're monitoring it, this realtime perspective. We do have a transient portfolio, but by and large, depending on the success of the Fed, it could have an impact on where we land within our range, but we're not seeing that today. There's nothing today that we see that changes our cadence nor changes our view on the strength of the back half of the year.

And then wrapping all that up, Tyler, I think we still remain confident that our portfolio, as it's demonstrated over the last year and the first quarter, will continue to outperform the industry. And I think that's the takeaway.

Okay. Great comments there. I asked about four questions in one, so I'll pass it off. Thank you.

Next question, Austin Werschmitt with Keep Bank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, Josh. Hi, it's Josh Riedlund for Austin. Just wondering, given the limited visibility in recent trends, how comfortable are you with the acceleration implied in rep bar guidance?

Look, I would say that

our portfolio is indexed to urban. Urban is indexed to BT. The strength that we're seeing in BT is going to play a role in our cadence for the year. But urban is benefiting from all segments right now. As I mentioned before, BT continues to steadily improve, group remains robust, and urban leisure is healthy. In addition to our conversions which we outlined in our prepared remarks, we're going to benefit from that as well and our overall footprint. And so I would say to you that based upon what we know today and what we're seeing, we affirm that we've come to our range. We've looked at a variety of different scenarios and different outcomes, and those scenarios still fit within the range that we provided.

Thank you. That's helpful. And just wondering, how much of a rep bar benefit could you potentially see from any incremental international inbound and any markets you would call out there?

Yeah, I would say that when we look at our footprint, and I'll give some color on Asia, but when we look at our footprint, New York, San Francisco, and South Florida are typically the markets that have the strongest amount of international. In aggregate for our footprint, international historically is only represented about 3%, but for markets like New York, San Francisco, and South Florida, it was much more substantial. South Florida and New York are generally back at 2019 levels from an international perspective, but Asia is not back on the west coast.

And to give you a little color around China, so what we're seeing is flights are increasing in 24 versus 23, and the primary reason it's, you know, visas, collecting a visa is only taking about eight days, and so we're seeing better flight patterns in regards to having almost 50 per week as of March 31st versus 35 most recently, still below 2019 levels, but what's encouraging, we're already seeing growth in LAX as well as San Francisco in regards to growth from China with the weekly seats that are actually being purchased in advance. And then lastly, to Leslie's point, when we look at, you know, where we are completely outside of Asia, you know, you're in San Francisco, you have almost 100% now in January and February because what's going on there is Korea, Canada, Singapore, and UK have kind of taken the place of China with China having momentum. So it's encouraging that China's up, and we're seeing it going in the right direction, and that can only be upside to urban markets, as Leslie mentioned about New York and Boston as well.

Great. Thank you very much.

Next question, Dory Custin with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Thanks, morning. We've heard from some peers that they've seen a softening in their short-term leisure transient pickup of late. Have you seen any of that?

Dory, I would say that, you know, leisure still continues to be a tale of two cities. And so as I mentioned, you know, our leisure was up two points in the first quarter, but urban leisure was up three points. And urban leisure continues to remain healthy given our footprint and the demand dynamics. I would also say to you that if you deconstruct leisure down even further into rate versus demand, you know, we all knew that resorts would pull back from its peak on rate, but urban leisure's rate continues to remain at or near its peak, and we haven't seen a degradation in that. And so from our perspective, what we're seeing in our portfolio is that leisure remains healthy.

And then on the resort leisure side, again, smaller percentage of the overall portfolio, but just as a reminder, in our footprint, that's where our conversion is. throughout the Corry Dunes as well as Santa Monica. We are having significant growth as Leslie mentioned in the prepared remarks, and then Charleston continues to present positive growth based on what's happening in that market. So our conversions are a part of resort leisure in addition to some of the hotels that we mentioned in regards to the ROIs as in Deerfield Beach and other locations that have had some

significant growth. The latest month we have the segmentation data for is March, and I think that really tells a story for our leisure's ability to be able to backfill, particularly in the back couple weeks when group was soft. Our March leisure was up 7% year over year with resorts up 8%, and so what that demonstrated to us is the ability for our portfolio to capture that leisure demand because of who our core customer is. So I think that's the latest data that we have that shows that we have more resort than our portfolio, which is more urban leisure.

And just one more data point that distinguishes our portfolio, Dory, is that our suite product which I spoke about in my prepared remarks also is very attractive during spring break with families, et cetera, and so we saw rate premium in that particular category as well.

Got it. And then can you just update us on where you stand today with the relative health of the New York transaction market right now?

Yeah, I would say, as we said on the last call, that when you look at the NIC in terms of its size, number of keys, its amount of meeting space, it fits perfectly within our portfolio. We have basically reduced our exposure to New York with the sale of the DT Met, and so we're very happy with our current footprint in New York and we consider the NIC a core asset at this point in time. It's irreplaceable asset in an irreplaceable location overall. In terms of transactions in the New York market, I would say I don't think they're tracking any differently than broader transaction market. Overall volume for the transaction market still remains constrained. While it's improving, it's still not, it's still slower than we expected because rates, rate cuts have been sort of pushed out.

Okay. Thank you. Next question, Anthony Powell with FarEyes. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I kind of want to dig in more on April because it's, looking at the SCR data that we have, I think month to date in April, they're reporting a .8% increase in red par, same thing with urban, up 7.1%. So maybe can you talk about what you saw in the first half of the month in April? Did you not see that kind of Easter shift, the rebound that you saw in the first half of the month in April? So we can understand better what's going on there.

Yeah, so Anthony, the first half obviously got the benefit of the Easter shift that Leslie talked about earlier. In addition to that, you had some anomalies like the eclipse that also provided a little bit of an uptick in some of those Sunbelt markets that you saw where they were on that path. In addition to that, I think the fundamentals held up pretty well in the first couple weeks. So that's where you got the lead, if you will, going into the back half. But if you look at the most recent SCR data, this week that just occurred, industry was down 2.5%, urban was down 8.8%, and most importantly, group was down 13%. So what happened this last week with Passover is now you decoupled Easter and Passover, which was at the same time, to now having two different moments in time in April. So we had to look at every single week as a different week in regards to how it got to that point. But still April, as an overall, did get the benefit of the front half, and that's why we were referring to the fundamentals of BT demand during the weeks that didn't have the holiday impact as a positive step in the right direction. So hopefully that helps you answer the question.

Yeah, I guess I'm just kind of surprised that the first half didn't cancel out with the second half, but it seems like the second half was a bit more impactful given the urban and group declines. Yeah,

I mean, I think the last few days which are going to be impacted and have limited group activity are really going to move the needle for the month. We saw similar trends in March that were very strong in the first half, and so I think when you get next week's data, which is going to show the last few days is where you'll see the

market is going to be a bit soft across the board for a lot of companies, so maybe talk about what you're seeing there in terms of demand for those hotels.

Yeah, I mean, our Southern California is actually relatively strong in performing well, Anthony. We were up .5% in the first quarter. San Diego has very strong city wide as well as Tom mentioned before, conversions are in Southern California market as well. That market has a strong BT base from aerospace and defense, and so I'm not sure what data you're looking at, but our Southern California is performing well.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't see the breakouts, but I think the STR data has been kind of weak in LA in particular, but you're doing better there, so that's good. All right, thank you.

Next question, Gregory Miller with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Thanks, good morning. I'd like to start off with a modeling question. What would you recommend we consider as we model operating expenses for the remaining quarters of the year? And I'm particularly focused on the other operating expenses line item, because to me that's one that's harder to model, but in dollar terms it's very significant. So I was hoping that if you can provide a little perspective in terms of how you think we should consider modeling that line in the quarter, up X more, generally speaking, as we shift from a relatively softer to Q to a theoretically relatively stronger back half of the year.

Thanks. Sure, Greg. I think, you know, let me helicopter up to total operating expenses, because I don't think we're going to be able to provide granular line item by line item guidance outside of what we've already provided for the full year guidance, but from an the year is roughly in that high five to 6% for the year on total operating expenses. Within those operating expenses, the fixed costs, which is primarily property insurance and property taxes, we would encourage you to model sort of upload double digits for those two line items, which are roughly 10% of our expenses. But I think when you think about the cadence, right, so our first quarter, you know, we were up in total operating expenses, mid fives, on a per occupied room basis, it was sub three. The variable costs were lower than that. When I'm defining variable costs or costs outside of the fixed expenses, on a per occupied room basis, we're at one six and a little under three for whole dollars. But the way I would think about modeling is that as the year progresses, the inflationary pressures decline, and so we would be able to measure that So I would model kind of that higher in the early quarters and have that weighing down. Now, I don't think it's going to be measured in 300 basis points spread between the first quarter and the last quarter, but I would just say incrementally a little better each quarter as the comps as we're comping against the period where we're just an easier comp to 23.

Okay. I appreciate that. And then for my follow-up, this is a more broader question on the foliar guide. In order for you to achieve the top end of your foliar guidance based on one key results and the two key rep par outlook that you provided, what variables do you think have to actualize in order for you to hit that top end of the guidance?

So, the top end of the guidance is the top end of the guidance. Yeah. I mean, what we said before was that our portfolio indexes to urban, urban indexes to BT. And so really, as goes BT, as goes our portfolio. And that's sort of the way to think about it. I think that is the biggest input to your question. Okay. Thanks, Lofley.

Next question. Chris Darling with Green Street. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Leslie, I think in your prepared comments, you mentioned plus or minus 7% growth in out of room spend during the quarter, so pretty significant spread relative to rep par growth. What's your expectation for how that gap in growth between room revenue and non-room revenue trends throughout the year? Should we expect a pretty similar sizeable gap there?

Yeah. For the full year, Chris and John, we expect anywhere from 50 to 100 basis points premium of total revenue growth versus rep park is kind of how we're thinking about the year. So when you look at out of room spend, obviously that equates to a larger percentage when you look at those lines in a vacuum. But in total, when you think about total revenue growth versus room revenue growth, it's that 50 to 100 basis points is how we're thinking about for the year.

Right. And that's really being influenced by a lot of things that we sort of talked about before in our prepared remarks that Tom hit on as well from what we're doing in our public space and taking non-revenue generating space and turning it into revenue.

All right. Yeah. I'll help with comments there. And then maybe a follow-up to the prior question. Leslie, you mentioned kind of as DT goes, the portfolio goes, can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing on the larger corporate account side? I think we've heard from some of the brand companies that maybe there's a little bit more encouraging movement in that regard more recently.

Yeah. I mean, I would say that in general, DT continues to benefit from SMEs, which remain very strong and healthy, and that we are continuing to see a ramp in national accounts on the corporate side. You know, industries from the tech and financial services, consulting, all of that is ramping up and in general, but it's also being aided by the return to work mandates that we're seeing as well. And so, I mean, Tom can give some additional color, but big picture, you know, it's strong. I think the other thing that's worth noting as well is that what we're seeing on the DT side is that it is balanced between rate and AUC. It's not just one or the other, and that is a very important point as well.

Yeah. And I think that's where I was going to add some color, Chris. When you think about it, so the RFP season was healthy. We had rate growth, so you automatically have that as a backdrop when the national corporate accounts come back with demand. And so what we're encouraged about is the demand was just as healthy as the average rate, and that's where we see the growth. On day of week, our Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is where our most significant growth in RevPAR was in the first quarter. We don't see that changing. That's where the opportunity is because that's where you look at the percentage of 19 is still from an occupancy and demand standpoint still in the low 90s to high 80s, and so that's where we think BT can give us that RevPAR lift. From an account standpoint, Leslie's right. National corporate is where we see volume increasing, and I think you heard that from the brand calls already. And that's where you're seeing some additional demand coming in on those days. As far as return to office, the highest amount of people going back to the office is Tuesday night at about 61, 62% nationally for our industry, and the lowest demand is Friday at 34, no surprise, right? So Thursday is still a check-in day for weekends, and midweek we see that office demand. That's the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday that we're trying to yield with that BT coming back at those moments in time.

And that midweek is translated into .5% growth for us in the first quarter, and we're still seeing that strength. And May is a month that generally benefits significantly from BT.

All right. Very helpful. Thanks,

all. I would now like to turn the floor over to Leslie Hale for closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for joining our call. We look forward to seeing many of you over the next several weeks at various conferences. For those of you who don't see, who we don't see, we hope you have a great summer. Thank you, everybody.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.