Business Travel News
Business Travel News
  • SECTIONSOpen Menu
    • Transportation
    • Lodging
    • Payment & Expense
    • Technology
    • Distribution
    • Meetings
    • Global
    • Management
    • Travel Procurement
    • Voices
    • Recent Issues
  • VOICESOpen Menu
    • Expert Q&A
    • Podcasts
    • OpEds
    • What to Watch 2022
  • RESEARCHOpen Menu
    • BTN's 2022 Essential OBT Guide
    • Corporate Travel 100
    • Corporate Travel Index
    • Expense Manager Report
    • Small & Midsize Enterprise
    • Salary Survey
    • Strategic Meetings Report
    • VIEW ALL
  • WEBINARSOpen Menu
    • View All Webinars
  • EVENTSOpen Menu
    • Webinars
    • Business Travel Hall of Fame
    • Business Travel Intelligence Summit
    • Business Travel Lodging Summit
    • Business Travel Show
    • Business Travel Tech Talk
    • Business Travel Trends Forecasts
    • DEI Symposium Series
    • Entertainment Travel Summit
    • Global Travel Risk Summit
    • Government Travel Summit
    • Innovate
    • Strategic Meetings Summit
    • Sustainable Business Travel Summit
    • VIEW ALL EVENTS
  • RESOURCESOpen Menu
    • Business Travel Buyer's Handbook
    • Business Travel Buyer's Techbook
    • Corporate Travel Index Calculator
    • Data Sources: The Reference Guide
    • White Papers & Case Studies
    • Influencers
    • Webinars
    • Videos
    • Hotel Search
  • SECTIONSOpen Menu
    • Transportation
    • Lodging
    • Payment & Expense
    • Technology
    • Distribution
    • Meetings
    • Global
    • Management
    • Travel Procurement
    • Voices
    • Recent Issues
  • VOICESOpen Menu
    • Expert Q&A
    • Podcasts
    • OpEds
    • What to Watch 2022
  • RESEARCHOpen Menu
    • BTN's 2022 Essential OBT Guide
    • Corporate Travel 100
    • Corporate Travel Index
    • Expense Manager Report
    • Small & Midsize Enterprise
    • Salary Survey
    • Strategic Meetings Report
    • VIEW ALL
  • WEBINARSOpen Menu
    • View All Webinars
  • EVENTSOpen Menu
    • Webinars
    • Business Travel Hall of Fame
    • Business Travel Intelligence Summit
    • Business Travel Lodging Summit
    • Business Travel Show
    • Business Travel Tech Talk
    • Business Travel Trends Forecasts
    • DEI Symposium Series
    • Entertainment Travel Summit
    • Global Travel Risk Summit
    • Government Travel Summit
    • Innovate
    • Strategic Meetings Summit
    • Sustainable Business Travel Summit
    • VIEW ALL EVENTS
  • RESOURCESOpen Menu
    • Business Travel Buyer's Handbook
    • Business Travel Buyer's Techbook
    • Corporate Travel Index Calculator
    • Data Sources: The Reference Guide
    • White Papers & Case Studies
    • Influencers
    • Webinars
    • Videos
    • Hotel Search
Business Travel News
  • Business Travel News on Twitter
  • Business Travel News on LinkedIn
  • Business Travel News on Facebook
  • SECTIONS
    • Transportation
    • Lodging
    • Payment & Expense
    • Technology
    • Distribution
    • Meetings
    • Global
    • Management
    • Travel Procurement
    • Voices
    • Recent Issues
    Subscribe to NewslettersBTN DailyBTN GlobalBTN Travel ManagementTravel Procurement
    Subscribe to Print IssuesBusiness Travel NewsTravel Procurement
  • VOICES
    • Expert Q&A
    • Podcasts
    • OpEds
    • What to Watch 2022
    Tripism CEO Kerr Assesses Travel Management EvolutionTripism CEO Kerr Assesses Travel Management Evolution
    Bryan LeibmanNewly Acquired by JPMC, Frosch Goes Into Growth Mode
    Viktor NekrylovDRCT Aims to Bridge Airline, TMC Connections
  • RESEARCH
    • BTN's 2022 Essential OBT Guide
    • Corporate Travel 100
    • Corporate Travel Index
    • Expense Manager Report
    • Small & Midsize Enterprise
    • Salary Survey
    • Strategic Meetings Report
    • VIEW ALL
    Annual Supplier Ratings• Car Rental Survey & Report• Hotel Survey & Report• Airline Survey & Report
    Special Reports• The Mechanics of Sustainble Business Travel• Pandemic-Era Traveler
  • WEBINARS
    • View All Webinars
    How to Inflation-Proof Your Travel Program

    Tues., July 12 at 12pm ET / 9am PT
    Sponsored By: TripActions

    Managing Events in Today's Realities

    Weds., July 20 at 1pm ET / 12am PT
    Sponsored By: Cvent

    Mastering Mobility: Control Costs and Other Travel Program Pain Points

    Tues., July 26 at 12pm ET / 9am PT
    Sponsored By: Deem

  • EVENTS
    • Webinars
    • Business Travel Hall of Fame
    • Business Travel Intelligence Summit
    • Business Travel Lodging Summit
    • Business Travel Show
    • Business Travel Tech Talk
    • Business Travel Trends Forecasts
    • DEI Symposium Series
    • Entertainment Travel Summit
    • Global Travel Risk Summit
    • Government Travel Summit
    • Innovate
    • Strategic Meetings Summit
    • Sustainable Business Travel Summit
    • VIEW ALL EVENTS
    2nd Annual DEI Symposium Series

    Virtual Event Series - June 21 & July 13

    38th Annual Travel Manager of the Year Awards

    San Diego, CA - August 16, 2022

    4th Annual Business Travel Lodging Summit America

    InterContinental Times Square - New York City,

    5th Annual Strategic Meetings Summit London

    etc.venues Monument - London, 26 September 2022

  • RESOURCES
    • Business Travel Buyer's Handbook
    • Business Travel Buyer's Techbook
    • Corporate Travel Index Calculator
    • Data Sources: The Reference Guide
    • White Papers & Case Studies
    • Influencers
    • Webinars
    • Videos
    • Hotel Search
    BTN CTI Calculator

    Filter in or out as many as 200 cities, as well as hotel and car rental class and meals of the day and watch as the per-diem calculator automatically adjusts per diems to your program. Drill down into cost breakdowns and export the results.

  • Business Travel News Supplier DirectorySUPPLIER DIRECTORY
T R A V E L   P R O C U R E M E N T

Procurement

Takeaways from Hilton Earnings: Improving Corporate Biz, HNA Divestiture & Group Intermediary Relations

By Julie Sickel / April 26, 2018 / Contact Reporter
Share

Hilton reported positive trends for both corporate and group travel during the first quarter. Hilton president and CEO Christopher Nassetta said during the company's earnings call that both segments outperformed expectations, continuing a trend seen during the fourth quarter of 2017.

He said conversations with Hilton's largest corporate customers reveal improved optimism from this same period last year. "[Corporate customers] are spending more," he said. "They're ultimately hiring more, and they're feeling better. I think they feel like they have more visibility in some very important areas that were hanging out there. Regulatory and tax—there was a serious lack of clarity on where those things were going over the last bunch of years. I think they're feeling good and they are definitely traveling more in a transient and a group context."

New demand and improved conversions during the first quarter drove a 20 percent increase in bookings for all future periods, Nassetta said. With that, first quarter food and beverage revenue grew 6 percent year over year, which he said points once more to corporate customers "loosening up the purse strings."

If you talk to the folks in the hotels as the big groups are coming through, people are just spending more on individual events," Nassetta said. "They're doing more individual events, they're doing coffee breaks that they might have cut out."

HNA Is Out

Hilton in early April repurchased 16.5 million shares of Hilton common stock from HNA Group for $1.17 billion. With that and HNA's sale of an additional 66 million Hilton shares in an underwritten public offering, the Chinese conglomerate has fully exited its investment in Hilton, ending a relationship that lasted only a year. HNA in March also sold its stake in Hilton's two spinoffs, Hilton Grand Vacations and Park Hotels & Resorts.

RELATED: Hilton's HNA Relationship

HNA Group is also an investor in The Rezidor Hotel Group. During a recent call with investors, Rezidor president and CEO Federico Gonzalez dismissed questions relating to HNA's apparent financial instability. "Our job as management is: We work for a board of directors and for all the shareholders and in that sense it does not affect today our day-to-day operations or even the five-year plan." He added that it's not the job of management to monitor the financial situation of its shareholders.

Groups & Meetings Commissions Cuts

Hilton in March announced its plans to cut the commissions it pays to third-party groups and meetings intermediaries in the U.S. and Canada from 10 percent to 7 percent starting Oct. 1. Nassetta said Thursday that Hilton has to strike a "delicate balance" of driving business results and maintaining good relationships with intermediaries. "You've seen huge increases in the percentage of group business that has an intermediary over the last decade," he said. "In order to be responsible for the whole system and to deliver profitability to owners, we need to drive efficiencies, and this is a means to being able to continue to drive efficiencies in distribution costs."

Don't Expect Hilton Home Rentals or Experiences Anytime Soon

This week, Marriott International announced beta testing of home rentals in the London market under its Tribute Portfolio brand. This month, it also announced an expansion of its experiences platform, Marriott Moments. Other industry players, such as Hyatt Hotels Corp. and AccorHotels, also have extended their platforms beyond traditional lodging stays to broader travel experiences.


[Corporate customers are] feeling good, and they are definitely traveling more in a transient and a group context."

Hilton's Christopher Nassetta

Nassetta said that there's nothing like that in the company's road map. "You can imagine that we are always looking at options in terms of what we can offer our customers. That's why we've launched five new brands in as many years and we've got four new brands that will come out over the next year or so. And we've looked at other areas in the travel space, to judge whether we should do it." Hilton has decided not to do home rentals, he said. "That's not to say that we wouldn't consider that in the future at some point. … As you've heard in my description of Airbnb in the past, at the moment we believe it is enough of a different business that it is not something that we need to or should focus on, that delivering for our customers the core experience of a very high-quality, consistent, differentiated product with amenities associated with it and with very high-quality, consistent service delivery is what they come to us for."

Q1 Earnings

Systemwide occupancy rose 1.8 percentage points year over year during the first quarter to 71.8 percent, and average daily rate increased 1.2 percent to $145.21. The company raised its full-year 2018 systemwide revenue per available room guidance to between 2 percent and 4 percent, an improvement on the 1 percent-to-3 percent outlook Hilton provided in February. As of March 31, Hilton's development pipeline stood at 355,000 rooms, a 9 percent year-over-year increase. Total net income for the first quarter reached $163 million, up from $48 million during the first quarter of 2017.

RELATED: Hilton Q4 earnings

More Procurement
Related
CTM Acquires SME-Focused Corp. Travel Agency

Australia-based travel management company Corporate Travel Management has acquired 1000 Miles Travel...

Spirit Postpones Frontier Merger Vote

Spirit Airlines on Wednesday announced it would delay until July 8 a shareholder vote at a special...

CAPA, Envest Global Benchmark Airline Sustainability for Corporate Buyers

Building on the joint CAPA-Envest Airline Sustainability Benchmarking Report released last fall...

Sponsored Content

We’re making history by making our carbon history
We’re making history by making our carbon historyBy United Airlines

We’re going beyond traditional carbon offsets and taking a more direct approach to making sustainable aviation the norm. KEEP READING

Duty of Care Due Diligence Requires Wider Scope
Duty of Care Due Diligence Requires Wider ScopeBy Qatar Airways

Travel professionals must do everything they can to demonstrate due diligence and widen the scope of what they do in the name of duty of care. KEEP READING

Don't Let NDC Take a Backseat in 2022
Don't Let NDC Take a Backseat in 2022By FCM

Get ready to tailor travel programs by leveraging NDC with your partners in 2022. KEEP READING

More Procurement

JetBlue Again Sweetens Spirit Bid as Vote Looms
Spirit Backs Frontier's Sweetened Merger Offer Over JetBlue's
JetBlue Ups Ante Again to Acquire Spirit
Choice to Acquire Radisson Hotel Group Americas

VIEW ALL
Subscribe to Our

Free Newsletters

pixel2

Click Here for our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Business Travel NewsBusiness Travel News
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Business Travel News on Twitter
  • Business Travel News on LinkedIn
  • Business Travel News on Facebook
BUSINESS TRAVEL NEWS
NORTHSTAR TRAVEL GROUP
Business Travel News
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Upload Print Ad Material
  • Purchase Reprints
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Subscribe to BTN
  • Subscribe to Travel Procurement
  • Subscribe to Newsletters
  • BTN Europe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
Business Travel News
Business Travel News Travel Procurement The Beat
Northstar Travel Group
  • Retail Travel
  • Travel Weekly
  • Travel Weekly Asia
  • Travel Weekly China
  • TravelAge West
  • TravelPulse
  • TravelPulse Canada
  • TravelPulse Quebec

  • Hotel Investment
  • Burba Hotel Network

  • Travel Technology
  • Inntopia
  • Phocuswire
  • Phocuswright
  • Web In Travel
  • Meetings & Incentives
  • Northstar Meetings Group
  • Meetings & Conventions
  • Meetings & Conventions China
  • Meetings & Conventions Asia
  • Meeting News
  • Successful Meetings
  • Incentive
  • SportsTravel

  • Data Products
  • Agent Studio
  • AXUS Travel App
  • Intelliguide
  • travel42
Northstar Travel Group
Copyright ©2022 Northstar Travel Media, LLC. All rights reserved.    100 Lighting Way Secaucus, NJ 07094-3626 USA | Telephone: (201) 902-2000
RRManagement rrtestprocurement