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| And we expect to do better due to the lack of material disruption from renovations and repositionings in '24, which will soon be complete and from gaining RevPAR share from our many completed major repositionings and redevelopments over the last several years |
| This better-than-expected performance in the fourth quarter was fueled by our urban hotels, which continued to experience a healthy recovery in corporate transient and group demand, including from improving convention calendars and recovering leisure travel in the cities, driven by concerts and sporting events |
| This is a testament to the dedication, innovation and resilience of our hotel teams and operating partners |
| This highlights our success in mitigating cost pressures across the portfolio, and our teams are proud to achieve these positive results |
| We are delighted to report favorable operating and financial results for 2023 |
| Not only are we excited about LaPlaya's operations getting back to normal, but we're also very excited about the significant upside throughout our portfolio following our $0.5 billion-plus investment program over the last few years |
| Our adjusted funds from operations per share also surpassed our outlook, ending the year at $1.60 per share, with the fourth quarter at $0.21, beating the top end of our Q4 outlook by $0.07 per share |
| Given our forecast for the industry's performance for 2024, we expect to do substantially better than the industry given our 60% or so concentration in major urban markets, including slower to recover markets, which have been accelerating |
| Whenever we get over this macroeconomic Hill related to the Fed's efforts to drive down inflation to its 2% target, we expect to experience a significant upside in our markets over a multiyear period that will be powered by little to no supply growth in our markets while economic growth drives up travel demand |
| We also believe demand will grow in a healthy and profitable way due to strong economic growth, driven by significant technological and medical developments, a massive onshoring effort in various industries, growth coming from the green energy transition and positive secular trends related to travel |
| This gap highlights our portfolio's significant remaining growth potential, particularly at our urban properties, which are on a promising recovery path |
| And the stronger markets like Boston and in San Diego as an example, exceeding '19 levels with strong operating leverage as well |
| These positive fundamentals in totality, coupled with a moderating inflation outlook and significant benefits from the completion of our strategic redevelopment program should lead to very strong bottom line performance for us over an extended number of years |
| These are positive indicators heading into 2024 |
| Not surprisingly, our urban pace is stronger than our resort pace, but both are significantly ahead of last year |
| Encouragingly, our group pace is looking good for '24 |
| For 2024, we expect same-property total revenue growth to exceed same-property RevPAR growth as it did in '23 due to strong food and beverage and other revenue growth, some of which is a result of the continuing recovery in group and some as a result of the significant remerchandising we've done it so many of our properties where we've added more meeting space, event venues and bar outlets, improve some of our outdoor event and restaurant venues to increase the length of their outdoor operating seasons and reconfigured and reconcepted restaurants to focus on increasing banquet and catering business and driving higher revenues and profits |
| So we've been improving the overall quality of the portfolio |
| San Francisco also showed substantial improvement with occupancy climbing 61% from 47% in 2022 |
| In 2023, our resorts maintained their strong performance with occupancy rates rising by approximately 2 percentage points to 65.8% despite the negative impact of significant disruptive redevelopments at Estancia La Jolla, Jekyll Island Club Resort and Southernmost Resort Key West during the year |
| I also want to point out that overall industry performance in 2023 and so far in 2024, has substantially benefited from the very strong performance of Las Vegas, a large, volatile and influential market affecting the total industry numbers |
| In the fourth quarter, our resorts benefited from increased business group demand as evidenced by the 1 percentage point rise in weekday resort occupancies over the comparable prior year period and weekend resort rates surged by 7 points to 74.6%, highlighting the enduring appeal of leisure travel and attractiveness of our redeveloped and repositioned resorts |
| So I think the setup is good for the year |
| Across the portfolio, same-property RevPAR for 2023, so a 4.2% increase year-over-year increase, while the same-property total RevPAR grew by 5.9%, indicated continued strong non-room revenue growth along substantial occupancy improvements |
| This progress was achieved despite an approximate 113 basis point negative impact from renovations, showcasing our portfolio's robustness and potential for future growth |
| Our urban properties experienced a significant uplift in 2023 with a 9.3% increase in RevPAR and an 11.3% rise in total RevPAR |
| The resort and club look great, and it's better than ever, report is to ramp up quickly with our restored product |
| For 2023, same-property EBITDA came in at $350.9 million, with Q4 at $66.6 million, exceeding the top end of our outlook by $3.6 million, thanks again to better-than-expected urban demand recovery in Q4 |
| It's important to note that the vast majority of these returns on these recent investments have not yet been realized, but we anticipate significant improvements in market share and cash flow as they ramp up and stabilize |
| So group has been improving, including in-house group and leisure is coming back to the market, both from a domestic perspective and from an international inbound perspective |
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| During 2023, our hotel EBITDA experienced several challenges that impacted our performance, including renovation disruptions, which we estimate had a negative impact of $12.7 million |
| So even as we gained ground from not having much comparative negative impact from our major renovations and redevelopments in Q1, our resorts have suffered from softer leisure demand due to the weather |
| Unfortunately, March's performance will be negatively impacted by the last week of the month due to the earlier arrival of the Easter holiday this year |
| Excluding Las Vegas, the rest of the industry's performance was softer in 2023 |
| Perhaps it's just difficult comps for the middle to lower price point hotels as others have suggested |
| Given the weak overall trends over the last 10 months, including January and also for February so far this year, we expect industry RevPAR for 2024 to be flat to up 2% |
| But heavy rains on the West Coast, there are risk from those |
| Additionally, severe adverse weather events and the L.A |
| This forecast also assumes a so-called soft landing for the economy |
| While total pace is strong, we caution that booking trends have lengthened and continued to normalize |
| And therefore, as we saw in some months last year, the short-term pickup was softer than the year before |
| As to the hotel industry, I believe the industry's reported performance in the second half of 2023, and so far in 2024, clearly evidences a softening in overall demand, primarily in the mid to lower segments, perhaps indicating financial sensitivities in the middle to lower socioeconomic demand segments likely resulting from the impacts of inflation, the reduction or elimination of extra savings from pandemic era government transfer payments and the dramatic increase in consumer credit rates |
| And the occupancies are still below where we were pre-pandemic |
| It seems like that market's been a little bit challenging |
| However, this level is still well below our pre-pandemic occupancy of 81% in 2019 and our peak occupancy of 85% in 2016 |
| But total industry demand hasn't exceeded restricted supply growth since March of last year, and it's been negative seven out of the last 10 months |
| And clearly, we know values went down dramatically in a number of the markets on the West Coast |
| Consequently, the net negative impact of these onetime items on hotel EBITDA totaled approximately $5.5 million |
| And by our calculations, that weaker performance equated to 48 basis points or just shy of 0.5% |
| Weather on the West Coast and in South Florida has not been favorable so far this year, particularly in February |
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