U.S. business travel bookings at Hyatt Hotels Corp. properties in the past few weeks have "been down in the high single digits versus last year," president and CEO Mark Hoplamazian said Thursday during the hotel company's first-quarter earnings call.
The recent softness in business travel bookings is concentrated primarily in the hotel company's upscale and select-service brands, Hoplamazian said.
"Our larger corporate customers are still on the road traveling for business," Hoplamazian said. "And while transient remains short-term, we believe that if visibility to macroeconomic policy improves, bookings could accelerate from what we have seen over the past few weeks."
The slowdown comes after a first quarter in which systemwide Hyatt business travel revenue per available room increased 12 percent year over year, an increase Hoplamazian said was driven by large corporate customers. It also was boosted from the shift in the Easter holiday, around which business travel typically slows, from the first quarter in 2024 to the second quarter in 2025.
Hoplamazian suggested business travel bookings at Hyatt's luxury and upper upscale properties appear solid through the end of May, although they represent only a small share of the hotel company's volume, but lower tiers are a different story.
"The place where it's negative is in upscale. It's select-service," Hoplamazian said. "And so BT is coming off in select-service overall. Our biggest accounts are actually positive in select service, but the overall business transient pace is definitely off on the select-service side."
Hyatt CFO Joan Bottarini on the call added that both business and leisure transient in international markets in the past few weeks has been "notably stronger" than in the United States.
Demand for corporate meetings, on the other hand, remains strong, Hoplamazian said. "This is a year that so far has been dominated by corporate," he said of group demand. "Corporate is up in all respects and especially in bookings into the future."
First-quarter group RevPAR increased 9 percent year over year—a figure also boosted by the Easter shift—and the group booking pace at Hyatt's full-service managed properties for the balance of 2025 is up 3 percent, Hoplamazian said. Bookings for 2026 and beyond are up "double-digit" percentages, he said, "driven by corporate bookings."
Hyatt Q1 Metrics
Hyatt's systemwide first-quarter RevPAR increased 5.7 percent year over year to $134.55, while average daily rate increased 2.3 percent to $201.91 and occupancy rose 2.1 percentage points to 66.6 percent.
First-quarter U.S. RevPAR increased 5.4 percent year over year to $138.39, while ADR increased 2.4 percent to $208.39 and occupancy rose 1.9 percentage points to 66.4 percent.
Hyatt lowered its projected full-year 2025 RevPAR range to 1 percent to 3 percent higher than 2024 levels. (Last quarter, Hyatt forecast a 2 percent to 4 percent increase.) The new projection implies systemwide RevPAR for the balance of 2025 would be flat to 2 percent higher than 2024 levels, and U.S. RevPAR would be about flat year over year, Bottarini said.
Hyatt's total first-quarter revenue increased $4 million year over year to nearly $1.72 billion. Net income was $20 million compared with $522 million in the first quarter of 2024. Hyatt's Q1 income last year was boosted by sales of properties in Green Bay, Wis., Aruba and Zurich.
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