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Viad Corp

Q32024

11/7/2024

speaker
Jayla
Conference Operator

Good afternoon, my name is Jayla and I will be a conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the VIAD Corps Third Quarter 2024 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 the pound key. Thank you. If you're alone, you may begin your conference.

speaker
Kerry
Conference Host

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for VIAB's 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. During the call, you will hear from Steve Moster, our President and CEO, Ellen Ingersoll, our Chief Financial Officer, and David Berry, President and future CEO of Pursuits. As they discuss their business performance and outlook, they will reference specific pages from our earnings presentation, which is available on the investors section of our website. And before I turn the call over to Steve, I would like to draw your attention to pages two and three of our presentation, which contain important disclosures regarding the use of non-GAAP measures and forward-looking statements that we will provide during the call. And now, I'll turn it over to Steve, who will start on page four of our presentation.

speaker
Steve Moster
President and CEO

Thanks, Kerry, and thanks for all of you for joining our call. I'd like to start off by discussing our three key business highlights and updates. First, I'm happy to report that both Pursuit and GES delivered very strong performance during the third quarter. Pursuit's adjusted EBITDA came in near the high end of our guidance range. Outside of Jasper, we continue to see strong demand for our attractions and lodges and the iconic locations in which we operate. GES's adjusted EBITDA was above our guidance with impressive revenue growth and margin improvement. We successfully serviced our major non-annual shows during this quarter and remain focused on discipline cost management. Second, I'm also pleased to announce that we recently completed a $15.9 million tuck-in acquisition for Pursuit's Glacier Park collection to expand our successful offering in that area. And third, We are on track to complete the transformative sale of GES by the end of the year. This transaction will establish pursuit at a pure play high growth and high margin business. Standalone pursuit will have the financial flexibility and the balance sheet to accelerate its refresh build by growth strategy and capitalize on a substantial growth prospects in the hospitality and attraction space. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Ellen, who will review our third quarter financial performance. Ellen.

speaker
Ellen Ingersoll
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Steve. I'll start on page six with our consolidated third quarter results. Revenue of $455.7 million increased 25% year over year. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $103.1 million increased $16.9 million, and adjusted net income improved by $15.5 million. Our gap basis net income attributable to VIAD of $48.6 million with $7.3 million higher than the 2023 third quarter, primarily reflecting stronger performance at GES, partially offset by non-cash impairment charges and consulting costs related to the pending sale of GES. As shown on page 7, Pursuit delivered third quarter revenue of $182.3 million, adjusted EBITDA of $86.3 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin of 47.4%. Revenue in adjusted EBITDA was down $4.7 million and $5.5 million respectively from the prior year due to temporary closures and disruption caused by wildfire activity in Jasper National Park. Our Jasper Lodges and Attractions experienced a revenue decline of $21.9 million year-over-year, which was largely offset by 13% revenue growth from our experiences outside of Jasper National Park. On a same-store basis, which excludes the Jasper properties, attractions ticket revenue grew 16% and room revenue grew 9%, driven by strong, effective ticket prices and ADRs, as well as increased demand for our experiences. As shown on page 8, GES delivered consolidated revenue of $273.4 million, adjusted EBITDA of $20.2 million, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.4%. Consolidated revenue and adjusted EBITDA were up $94.5 million and $22.2 million respectively from the prior year, reflecting strong growth at both SPIRO and GES exhibitions. SPIRO revenue of $82.2 million increased 40% year over year, primarily due to strong client spending on major non-annual shows, which added $34 million of revenue to the quarter. GES exhibitions revenue increased 60%, primarily due to about $71 million of revenue from major non-annual shows, which outperformed our expectations. Next, on page nine, we generated $110 million of cash from operations, spent $15 million on capital expenditures, and repaid $94 million of debt during the third quarter. We ended the quarter with total liquidity of nearly $230 million and no borrowings on our revolver. Our total debt was $398.2 million and our total net leverage ratio was 1.7 times. Now I'll cover our 2024 outlook on page 10 starting with GES. Based on stronger than expected performance year to date in 2024, And favorable underlying demand trends, we are revising our prior full year guidance ranges. At GES, we now expect to achieve adjusted EBITDA of 90 to 95 million, up from previous expectations of 85 to 95 million. Additionally, we've narrowed our adjusted EBITDA range for the pursuit business to 87 to $92 million. As a result of these revisions, our consolidated full year EBITDA guidance range is now 163 to 172 million, which is up from our 2023 adjusted EBITDA of 147 million. These guidance ranges do not attempt to incorporate any business interruption recoveries as the timing and amounts of such recoveries are uncertain at this stage. Thus far, we've recovered approximately $6 million of insurance proceeds including $4.7 million received during the third quarter. These proceeds were used to cover property damage and costs we incurred for the protection and restoration of our Jasper businesses. We are actively engaged with our insurance carriers to understand the extent of additional insurance proceeds we should receive, and we will continue to provide updates as appropriate. Now, David and Steve will provide further insight into our business performance at Pursuit and GES. David?

speaker
David Berry
President and Future CEO of Pursuit

Thanks, Ellen. I'll start with a quick update on Jasper's reopening following the wildfire activity. As you're already aware, we lost one structure to the fire, our Moline Canyon Wilderness Kitchen. Fortunately, all of our other facilities are intact, and we were able to reopen seven out of eight hotels in Jasper during the third quarter. Road access to our Moline Lake Cruise attraction was not restored until after the end of the operating season, making it impossible for us to reopen that attraction this year. Pyramid Lake Lodge remains closed as we repair some minor damage from fire protection efforts, and this property will reopen prior to the busy holiday season. Our attractions and hospitality experiences at the Columbia Icefield reopened on August 9th, once the Icefield Parkway road closure was lifted. We were very pleased with the number of attraction visitors that came through during September, and it was only down about 5% from 2023. With all of our lodges back online, we expect to resume more typical guest occupancy levels as we head into the upcoming ski season in Jasper. Our Jasper room night reservations on the books for the fourth quarter are at about 90% of the prior year, and our first quarter 2025 reservations are tracking slightly higher than 2024 as of this same time last year. The booking pace is encouraging and demonstrates the perennial demand for this iconic destination. There are several market drivers that give us confidence in Jasper's return to historic business levels. So firstly, Jasper sits at a really important crossroads for leisure travelers visiting the Canadian Rockies. For our tour and travel partners, Jasper is key to successful multi-state journeys as it is perfectly located in a beautiful national park and facilitates tour and travel guests overnighting on a multi-destination itinerary. Secondly, the temporary reduction of 18% of Jasper's hotel room inventory is going to cause compression in the marketplace. It will take several years for those 400 hotel rooms lost to fire to be rebuilt. We have several seasons of compression ahead as demand from our tour and travel partners shows no sign of lessening. Thirdly, there's a concerted effort from the municipal, provincial, federal governments and Parks Canada to bolster the return to travel to Jasper. We expect this marketing energy to be powerful in saying to the world that Jasper is open for business. Now let's discuss pursuits year-to-date results and the strong performance we've delivered. For revenue on page 12, you can see that we delivered year-to-date revenue growth at 4% overall and 14% when adjusting for the third quarter fire impact in Jasper. The strong demand for iconic locations and unforgettable inspiring experiences combined with our proven refresh build by growth strategy and relentless focus on improving the guest experience enables us to drive increased visitation and improve rates. So let me talk a little bit about our attractions performance on page 13. Our year-to-date total attractions ticket revenue of $137 million grew 12% year over year on a 5% increase in visitors and a meaningful improvement in effective ticket prices. When adjusting to remove Jasper attractions from the third quarter, our ticket revenue growth was 21%, driven by dynamic pricing and our investments to enhance and grow our guest experience. A great example of this is Sky Lagoon in Iceland. In 2021, we completed construction on a very successful attraction, which has surpassed all of our expectations. We quickly recognized that demand for Sky's signature experience was exceeding our capacity. We saw an opportunity to expand that premium experience to drive incremental revenue and a really improved guest experience. I'm happy to report that we completed that expansion in August and saw an immediate lift in September with 13% year-over-year growth in visitation and 16% growth in effective ticket price. We're very pleased with the performance of this iconic attraction and look forward to building on its success. Additionally, our new Flyover Chicago attraction, which opened in March, continues to contribute to our visitation growth and receive excellent reviews. In addition to the phenomenal Chicago film, guests can now also enjoy our legendary Iceland film, as we drive repeat visitation with compelling content. I'll also call out to the Banff gondola and their team, which continues to deliver standout performance as a must-do attraction in Banff, offering incredible mountaintop views, elevated dining, interpretive experiences that pay homage to the history and culture of Banff National Park. So let's switch to hospitality next on page 14. pursuits year-to-date room revenue, excluding our temporarily closed Jasper lodging in the third quarter, grew about 8% year-over-year. All geographies outside of Jasper delivered growth in room revenue. Same-store RepFar also grew 8% year-over-year, which was driven by capturing higher ADRs while maintaining strong occupancy levels. Our pricing power strength is enabled by perennial demand, for our experiential travel destinations, our unrelenting focus on providing a great guest experience, and seasonal compression in our markets. Taking a look at adjusted EBITDA, we'll look on page 15 and discuss our adjusted EBITDA. Our team did an incredible job maximizing adjusted EBITDA during a pretty challenging third quarter and hustled to hold our year-to-date results nearly flat in the prior year. Full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA is also expected to be nearly in line with 2023, despite the Jasper wildfire impact. In 2025, we expect to deliver adjusted EBITDA greater than $100 million after absorbing approximately $12 to $13 million standalone public company costs, which we expect will be our normalized run rate basis cost level after transition costs have wound down. In 2025, we will continue to benefit from consumer travel trends, prioritizing experiences, the return of international visitation to our destinations, and the recovery in Jasper. The sum of these factors, combined with a great guest experience, will enable us to demonstrate the full earnings power of Pursuit's collection of experiences. Long-haul travel, trade visitation to Canada continues to build. we're seeing growth across markets around the world including asia we're very pleased to report that our two attractions at the columbia ice field which were some of the most impacted by the disruption of long-haul international travel trade visitation during the pandemic saw visitors increase about 27 year-over-year in the first half of the year prior to the closure of jasper national park This is quite encouraging and we expect to see continued visitation growth in 2025. We expect that all of our Jasper attractions and lodging properties will operate at full capacity in 2025 with a strong rebound. Jasper's Moline Lake and Icefield Parkway remain stunning examples of natural beauty in the Canadian Rockies. And the Jasper Town site is getting back to business with a strong focus on supporting the recovery of sections of town were damaged by fire as a reminder approximately 97 of jasper national parks 2.8 million acres were spared from the wildfires so with plenty of beautiful park to explore and about 18 of the overall jasper hotel bed base offline due to fire damage we expect strong demand for our lodging properties in 2025. jasper remains an important itinerary inclusion for travel trade and other long-haul travelers visiting the Canadian Rockies. So for an update on Refresh, Build, Buy, let's move to page 16 and talk about how we will accelerate our growth with our proven investment strategy, Refresh, Build, and Buy. Refresh, Build, Buy enabled us to triple our revenue from 2015 to 2023 at a 15% compound annual growth rate while realizing strong returns on our investments. And the pending sale of GES will give us a strong financial foundation to unlock our growth potential and meaningfully scale pursuit through acquisitions and organic growth opportunities. We've maintained an active acquisition pipeline of iconic experiences that we can now pursue with vigor, knowing we'll have the financial capacity to transact for the right deal. Just this week, we closed on a great $15.9 million tuck-in acquisition for our Glacier Park collection. The acquired businesses include the Apgar Lookout Retreat and Eddie's Cafe and Mercantile. Apgar Lookout Retreat and Eddie's are located adjacent to our existing 48 rooms in Apgar Village on a rare piece of privately held land inside Glacier National Park, bordering McDonald Creek and just steps from the shore of beautiful Lake McDonald. Apgar Lookout Retreat's six high end accommodation units are brand new and they're beautiful. And they're a step above all the other lodging experiences in the West Glacier area. Eddies is well positioned to offer food and beverage and retail merchandise to the approximately one million park visitors that come through Apgar as they explore Glacier National Park. This acquisition is a perfect complement to our Apgar Village Lodge And based on anticipated synergies, we believe that we can achieve an effective purchase multiple of about 7.5 times adjusted EBITDA. Another example of a buy investment is the Jasper Sky Tram. We previously announced an agreement to acquire this attraction. Enclosing has been delayed as we work with the seller to assess impacts of the wildfire activity in Jasper. The tram itself is operational today with some minor repairs that are underway. This is a great strategic fit for pursuit. We remain committed to adding it to our Banff Jasper collection and are working diligently to sort out the various insurance impacts and work towards an efficient close. We're also strongly interested in expanding our collections to new geographies that will help balance out our seasonality and diversify our footprint. The world is a big, beautiful place and our growth aperture is wide. Additionally, and importantly, we've identified approximately 20 actionable organic refresh and build opportunities within our existing geographies that represent a total investment of about $200 million. These are growth investments we can make in our well-instrumented and high-performing properties to improve and enhance the guest experience, much like the Sky Lagoon expansion I discussed earlier. We'll provide more insight into these specific opportunities as they move into execution. So through a combination of steady organic growth investments, opportunistic acquisitions, and an obsessive focus on hospitality, culture, and guest experience, we have our sights set on delivering ongoing growth and strong shareholder returns. So as I conclude my remarks, I just want to say a big thank you to the thousands of team members across Pursuit for bringing their best every day. Steve, back to you.

speaker
Steve Moster
President and CEO

Thanks, David. Before we open up the call for questions, I want to provide a quick update on GES and the pending sale of that business to Trulink Capital. I want to start by thanking the GES team for their dedication to consistently delivering excellent results for our clients and shareholders, and for the extra energy invested to ensure a successful sale transaction. Page 18 highlights the financial success that GES has achieved. and the strong execution of the team to drive margin expansion and revenue growth. We continue to see strong demand for exhibitions and experiential marketing services, and the GES team is laser-focused on executing our clients' experiences and delivering double-digit revenue growth with an EBITDA margin of about 9% in 2024. Our efforts to transform GES's cost structure and leverage our industry-leading position have set GES up for ongoing success under Trulink's ownership. As noted on page 19, we're on track to complete the sale of GES to Trulink on December 31st. As a standalone business within Trulink's business portfolio, GES will gain greater execution flexibility and access to capital to invest in the company's existing service offering while pursuing growth both organically and through strategic acquisition. And for Viad shareholders, this transaction will unlock our high growth, high return pursuit business as a pure play company with stronger growth prospects, a strong balance sheet to fund growth, and a proven management team ready to continue executing. The proceeds from this transaction will allow us to reset our capital structure. We intend to fully retire Viad's high cost term loan fee and revolver debt and put the excess cash on our balance sheet to fund near-term growth initiatives for Pursuit. The combination of very low leverage, excess cash, and a new undrawn revolver will give Pursuit immediate firepower to accelerate growth and enhance shareholder value through our proven refresh-build-buy strategy. This is a very exciting next chapter for Viad, soon to be renamed Pursuit. I want to extend a huge thanks to all the team members across GES, SPIRO, VIAD, and Pursuit for their efforts to deliver the best possible results and help us reach this pivotal milestone. And thank you to our shareholders for your continued support. It's been an incredible journey, and we're very excited about what Pursuit can accomplish in the near future. With that, let's open up the call for questions.

speaker
Jayla
Conference Operator

At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. The first question comes from Tyler Battery. Your line is now open.

speaker
Tyler Battery
Representative

Good afternoon. Thank you. So my first question it's actually on the flyover side of things. Um, can you talk a little bit more about flyover Chicago, flyover Las Vegas, uh, wherever you are in the ramp of those two assets, um, Chicago at this point, a positive contributor to, to, to EBITDA and then a little bit more big picture when you look farther out. Um, I mean, you still see flyover the platform overall as a growth engine for you. Is that something that you think that makes sense? And, um, the new pursuit entity?

speaker
David Berry
President and Future CEO of Pursuit

Hi, Tyler. A couple of things. So, yes, Chicago is on a positive track and doing well. As we look into the future, as I mentioned in previous calls, we're working on stabilizing all of those businesses and getting them to optimum performance. You know, they take a long time to build. They take a long time to come out of the ground. We're very proud of the experiences that we have. They have tremendous guest satisfaction ratings. We're going to work to optimize them, but we do not plan on deploying capital into creating future flyover locations right now. We've got lots to focus on on the iconic location side of the business.

speaker
Tyler Battery
Representative

Okay, perfect. And switching gears to Jasper, and you gave a lot of very helpful details there. I'm interested if you can talk a little bit more about the tour travel side of things um i'm not sure if there's any incremental details anecdotes etc that you could provide just given the conversations you're having with some of those folks i'm not sure when they look towards 2025 if their plans have changed at all given the given the wildfires and uh you know i'm also interested on the long haul side of things um you know when you look towards towards next year is there's a possibility that um you know we start to recover some of that lost business and I'm not sure any details in terms of numbers you could provide just trying to frame out what that might look like next year in terms of the impact of some of that long haul visitation coming back.

speaker
David Berry
President and Future CEO of Pursuit

Yeah, I mean, we view it as a return to normal. We have strong demand from our tour and travel partners. Remember that we're immersed in this as a company, right? We experience the fires. evacuated guests and everything else. But on a world scale, this is something that happened very quickly in a blip of news. So our initial modeling anticipates the 2025 travel trade revenue in Jasper to be up about 12% from the 2023 year, which is encouraging. We don't see anyone dropping Jasper on itineraries. As I mentioned in my remarks, one thing that's important to know is if you've got itineraries that you've booked with guests coming all across Western Canada, You need Jasper as a pivotal overnight destination because of where it sits geographically between the other main centers of tourism. So, you know, the demand for Jasper is strong. What's actually a little bit tough right now is that you've got, you know, 18% or 400 keys that have come out of inventory. And so now tour and travel partners who had booked those hotels over time are scrambling to be able to fill their itineraries. So I anticipate that our mix of tour and travel actually might be a little overweight as we work to accommodate demand through uh the summer of 25 but we see no lessening of demand we see no uh impact of stay away from jasper it needs time to recover we see the opposite that people are excited to come they want to support jasper that reflects in the first quarter pacing that we're seeing in lodging where we're actually tracking you know ahead there so uh we're encouraged by what we're seeing in terms of recovery

speaker
Kerry
Conference Host

Sorry, in our earlier remarks, we did talk about how much revenue was down in Jasper during the third quarter year over year. Might give you a bit of a sense of what recovery could look like. And again, 23 probably wasn't the strongest of years for us. But the year over year dip from Jasper in the third quarter was about $22 million in revenue.

speaker
Tyler Battery
Representative

OK, great. And thank you for highlighting that. You know, I think the last question for me, and you know, I'll keep it more generic, because I know, I mean, I'm asking for guidance, and I can't give guidance for next year, just trying to think through the EBITDA margin, and you know, maybe a stabilized EBITDA margin, if you, I think in the past, you'd kind of given some, I don't want to call them targets per se, but given some aspirations in terms of what you think EBITDA could be like at Pursuit. So just wanted to see if we could revisit those, please, and just talk about, you know, where you think EBITDA margin at Pursuit could go in the future.

speaker
David Berry
President and Future CEO of Pursuit

You know, we anticipate that without, you know, factoring in the public company burden, that we will be on the 30% mark for 2025. And, you know, we're working through the process now as we integrate some things and work on the business transition, but we're enthusiastic of where Pursuit's margin is going to be and feel good about that going forward.

speaker
Tyler Battery
Representative

Okay, great. I'll leave it there. Thank you for the detail.

speaker
David Berry
President and Future CEO of Pursuit

Thanks, Tyler.

speaker
Jayla
Conference Operator

The next question comes from Brian Mayer with the company B Reilly. Brian, your line is now open.

speaker
Brian Mayer
Representative, B Reilly

Thank you, and good afternoon. Just a couple from me. As it relates to Jasper and the lack of those four-footed rooms, is it safe to assume that you should be running TAB, Mark McIntyre, Pretty close to full occupancy for the next couple of quarters is construction crews and clean up and displaced residents, you know all the place to stay, I mean how should you think about that relative to prior years.

speaker
David Berry
President and Future CEO of Pursuit

You're going to have some seasonality, Brian, and as an example, for instance, you know, construction workers potentially going home on weekends and other things back to where they live and then coming back during the week. So it will be a little lumpy, but I think what's important to note is if you think to next summer, given that you have that removal of rooms, you're going to have very significant compression for summer 2025 in the Jasper market.

speaker
Brian Mayer
Representative, B Reilly

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" Okay, and as it relates to modeling right so it's nice that you're making this very clean. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" separation on 1231 so i'm assuming this is a silly action we're just going to model out to us through the end of the year, then get out pursued a standalone starting January 1. But where do we put the transaction-related costs? Are they all going to be completed in the fourth quarter? Is there going to be some spillover into the first quarter? And can you quantify that across quarters?

speaker
Ellen Ingersoll
Chief Financial Officer

On the transaction-related costs, most of the costs will be in 24. Some of them will spill over into 25. We're going to have some transition costs for IT. We're going to have some cash retention awards in 25, but most of the costs will be in 24.

speaker
Brian Mayer
Representative, B Reilly

And can you give us a zip code on those numbers? Is it a couple million? Is it 10 million? Is it 5 million? Like, how should we be thinking about that?

speaker
Ellen Ingersoll
Chief Financial Officer

Right. So, the transaction costs that we talked about relating to what will come out of the proceeds was about $20 million.

speaker
Brian Mayer
Representative, B Reilly

And is it safe to maybe do 15 million in the fourth and 5 million in the first, something along those lines?

speaker
Ellen Ingersoll
Chief Financial Officer

No, it would be about 20 million as of year end, and then another 5 to 6 million in 2025.

speaker
Brian Mayer
Representative, B Reilly

Okay, perfect. And then the insurance proceeds from Jasper, I was pleased to hear that you're already receiving money there. I think you said 4.7 in the third and 6 million total to date. Where do we find that on the P&L?

speaker
Ellen Ingersoll
Chief Financial Officer

The proceeds that came in. So, some of it is offset against the impairment. So, right now, we have the, we have, how much is on the balance sheet? We have $6.7 million in a receivable, but all the proceeds, everything is on the balance sheet. There's nothing that's hit the P&L. other than impairment. We had an impairment and then we had recoveries that offset that on the P&L, but you're not going to see any on the P&L currently. It's all on the balance sheet. So, as we recover BI in going forward, you'll see that as a separate line item on the P&L.

speaker
Brian Mayer
Representative, B Reilly

Going forward, I guess starting in the fourth quarter, first quarter. Right.

speaker
Ellen Ingersoll
Chief Financial Officer

Starting in the fourth quarter, any proceeds we receive, we'll break that out on the P&L.

speaker
Brian Mayer
Representative, B Reilly

Okay, perfect. Thank you. That's all for me.

speaker
Jayla
Conference Operator

Your next question comes from Alex Furman with the company Craig Harlem Capital Group. Alex, your line is now open.

speaker
Alex Furman
Representative, Craig Harlem Capital Group

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. David, it seems like every quarter this year, You know, we've kind of heard about the Sky Lagoon being really strong demand and different measures you're taking to capture that demand. And no matter what you do, it seems like there's just more and more demand there. I was wondering if you could maybe give us a little bit of a sense for those of us that haven't been out there yet. Can you describe to us what is the opportunity to expand on that property? Is there enough space in the area to potentially build a boutique hotel to leverage all of the demand and the strong location there? Really impressive results in the third quarter from Sky Lagoon. Just wondering how much more there could be to go there as you look at the future.

speaker
David Berry
President and Future CEO of Pursuit

Sure, I'd be happy to walk you through some stuff. So, a couple of things to remember, right, just to recenter on what we've actually done. So, at Sky Lagoon, we realized as things continued and momentum was building that the higher end experience, which is called Skule, which is the whole turf house experience between the steam shower and the salts and the salt scrub and the sauna and all, all of the different aspects of cold plunge and so on, it had a throughput issue. And it was incredibly popular, but we were turning guests away from a higher-end product because we had throughput issues. So the first problem we solved was to make the whole experience in the turf house incredibly beautiful, larger, and just magnificent. So now instead of one sauna that seats 50 beautiful people staring at the ocean, there's two. And there's a combination of just improvements to that facility. What that allows you to do is to sell more of our higher end products, which is the ritual and to really encourage guests. And it drives length of visitation. It drives guest satisfaction levels and so on. Remember that it's an opco and propco partnership, right? Where we work with our Icelandic partners who are the landowners there. So there are opportunities for development. And it would be something we might consider, we may not consider as time goes on. And so no commitment today as to what we might be envisioning there, other than there continues to be opportunity to expand the product, continue to have opportunity to work on the various brand aspects of it. But we're really, really pleased with how the design and operational efforts have brought it to fruition.

speaker
Alex Furman
Representative, Craig Harlem Capital Group

That's really helpful. Thank you. If I could just follow up on Jasper and the Canadian Rockies, it seems like you now have a pretty good handle, at least for the off-season here, of how demand is shaping up and what that's looking like in the new world in which a lot of your competitors are offline for a few years. Curious what you're seeing in terms of rates and then even more importantly, I guess, I'm curious to what extent the dent of supply of hotel rooms in Jasper is impacting the rest of the region. Are you seeing more people booking in Banff and elsewhere in the Rockies? Curious if that could potentially drive more overnight guests to Waterton Lakes or even to Golden?

speaker
David Berry
President and Future CEO of Pursuit

i think the interesting thing um alex is that recovery is happening very quickly so seven out of eight hotels in jasper are back open and hosting guests and excited to do it we have pyramid lake lodge undergoing a few repairs but it'll be open for the christmas holidays and we anticipate a busy winter season our pacing for the first quarter for that part of the ski season is doing well so we think we're going to have continued demand um and that's going to drive you know, obviously pressure and compression within the market that we'll work to adjust to. It will take several years for those 400 keys to be rebuilt. And so what's important is we're focused on, you know, how do we provide the support to our tour and travel partners, provide great experiences for guests and make the needed improvements that we're doing. Our Q4 rates are up from this time last year. And so we're excited about that. And we anticipate that we'll have continued rate growth through the beginning of 25 and obviously through summer 25.

speaker
Alex Furman
Representative, Craig Harlem Capital Group

That's great. Thank you very much.

speaker
David Berry
President and Future CEO of Pursuit

So welcome. And you need to go to Iceland. Yeah, for sure.

speaker
Jayla
Conference Operator

Again, if you'd like to ask a question, It is star followed by one. There are no further questions at this time. Steve Moster, time to call back over to you.

speaker
Steve Moster
President and CEO

All right. That concludes our call for today. So thank you very much for your interest in our business, and we will talk to you at the end of the next quarter. Thanks so much.

speaker
Jayla
Conference Operator

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and enjoy the rest of your day.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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