Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation

2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Neil Goldner, Vice President, Investor Relations for Marriott Vacations Worldwide. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Melissa, and welcome to the Marriott Vacations Worldwide First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I'm joined today by John Geller, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jason Marino, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I need to remind everyone that many of our comments today are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties which could cause future results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the press release that we issued last night, as well as comments on this call, are effective only when made and will not be updated as actual events unfold. Throughout the call, we will make references to non-GAAP financial information. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks in the schedules attached to our press release and on our website. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to John Geller.

Thanks, Neil. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. It was great to see so many guests enjoying time with their family and friends at our resorts, making lasting memories during the first quarter. That's why they come back year in and year out, and with a system-wide occupancy running 90% in Q1, we grew contract sales by 3%, excluding Maui, despite having a difficult VPG comparison, with first-time buyer tours growing 9%. We also started taking reservations for our new Marriott Vacation Club Resort in Waikiki at the end of the quarter, which remains on track to open later this year and reservations have been strong for this new property. Owners have consistently told us they wanted us to add a location in Waikiki and this new resort is already bringing excitement to the system. Concurrent with the resort opening, we plan to open a new sales gallery that we believe could be a meaningful contributor as it ramps up over a few years. And with Japanese arrivals to Hawaii up almost 75% year over year in the first quarter, the timing of this new resort couldn't be better. We've made good progress adding new marketing and sales executives in Maui and still expect contract sales to be up around 5 million this year. International contract sales grew more than 25% year-over-year, driven by double-digit growth in Asia Pacific as the market continues to recover. I'm also happy to announce that we recently signed an agreement to develop a new 60-unit Marriott Vacation Club Resort in Thailand. The resort will be co-located with an existing JW Marriott Hotel in Kellogg and will include a new on-site sales gallery when it opens in a few years. This will be our seventh resort in the Asia-Pacific region, and the team is busy working on other potential development opportunities around the world. Our Hyatt business also continues to progress nicely. By leveraging proven branded channels, we've been able to grow our Hyatt package pipeline while simultaneously replacing lower-quality tours with higher-quality, more cost-effective tours. Our Hyatt Vacation Club owners continue to utilize and enjoy the new owner benefits that we rolled out last year through the Beyond program, and we continue to work toward launching a consolidated Hyatt product. In our exchange and third-party management business, Interval International performed in line with our expectations for the quarter, with active members unchanged year over year and membership and getaway revenue increasing. As previously discussed, last year we hired a new chief information officer to drive our IT transformation efforts, and he spent a considerable amount of time analyzing where our opportunities lie. While this is a multi-year journey, our IT efforts this year will continue to be centered around consolidating legacy systems, modernizing our software, and increasing automation, while continuing to enhance our data and analytics capabilities to improve the efficiency of our marketing campaigns. Looking forward, we ended the quarter with 270,000 packages, and our team is working hard to get these customers on vacation. At the same time, the consumer shift to experience continues to benefit our business, with 84% of people recently surveyed planning to spend more or the same amount of money on travel this year compared to last year. International inbound travel to the U.S. continues to recover and is expected to approach pre-pandemic levels this year. Meanwhile, although the economy remains on solid footing, consumers are concerned about elevated price levels, which could impact their spending. Finally, as we approach the important summer vacation months, keys on the books in both North America and internationally are up a few points year over year. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jason to discuss our results.