Xenia Hotels & Resorts Inc (XHR) 2025 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Hello, and welcome, everyone, to the Xenia Hotels & Resorts Q3 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Becky, and I'll be your operator today. (Operator Instructions) I will now hand over to your host, Aldo Martinez, Manager of Finance, to begin. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Becky, and welcome to Xenia Hotels & Resorts third-quarter 2025 earnings call and webcast. I'm here with Marcel Verbaas, our Chair and Chief Executive Officer; Barry Bloom, our President and Chief Operating Officer; and Atish Shah, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Marcel will begin with a discussion on our performance, Barry will follow with more details on operating trends and capital expenditure projects, and Atish will conclude today's remarks on our balance sheet and outlook. We will then open the call for Q&A.

Before we get started, let me remind everyone that certain statements made on this call are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued this morning, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today, October 31, 2025, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold.

You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to net income and definitions of certain items referred to in our remarks in our third quarter earnings release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. The property level information we'll be speaking about today is on a same-property basis for all 30 hotels, unless specified otherwise. An archive of this call will be available on our website for 90 days.

I will now turn it over to Marcel to get started.

Thanks, Aldo, and good morning, everyone. As we reported this morning, our third quarter performance generally met the expectations we outlined during our second quarter earnings call. The lodging industry continues to experience a challenging operating environment, particularly as it relates to leisure demand that generally is a significant driver in the third quarter for our portfolio and the industry overall.

However, despite these macro challenges, we continue to benefit from the high-end positioning of our portfolio as well as unique internal growth drivers, such as the continued ramp of Grand Hyatt Scottsdale Resort. We also continue to benefit from strong Group demand throughout the portfolio, which was evident again in September and thus far in the fourth quarter.

We expect Group demand to remain strong as we look ahead to next year, which is supported by robust group room revenues already on the books for our portfolio for 2026. Turning to our third quarter financial results. For the third quarter of 2025, we reported a net loss of $13.7 million, adjusted EBITDAre of $42.2 million, adjusted FFO per share of $0.23, which was a decrease of 8% compared to the same quarter last year.

Our same-property RevPAR for the third quarter was essentially flat for our 30-hotel portfolio compared to the same period in 2024, with an occupancy decrease of 100 basis points, offset by a 1.6% increase in average daily rate. The Houston market, in particular, was a drag on portfolio performance as the market and our hotels faced tough comparisons due to a short-term demand lift from the aftermath of Hurricane Hurricane Beryl in the third quarter of last year.

Additionally, given the seasonality of the various demand segments in our portfolio, Group demand, which has been the strongest segment this year, was not as big of a driver for our portfolio in the third quarter as it was in the first half of the year and as we expect to see again in the fourth quarter. Despite these challenges, when excluding our Houston assets, same-property RevPAR increased by 2.9%, which was largely driven by significant year-over-year growth at Grand Hyatt Scottsdale as the resort contains its track towards post-renovation stabilization.

In addition to the strong growth in Scottsdale during the third quarter, we experienced double-digit percentage RevPAR growth in Atlanta, Santa Clara, Birmingham and Savannah. Despite the relatively muted performance in the third quarter, we are pleased that for the first nine months of the year, our same-property portfolio achieved a 3.7% increase in RevPAR, driven by 80-basis-point higher occupancy and a 2.4% increase in average daily rate when compared to the same period in 2024.

This outperformance was again mostly fueled by the recently renovated and up-branded Grand Hyatt Scottsdale Resort during the early phase of its path towards stabilization as it continues to perform in line with our underwriting expectations. We continue to be excited about the impact of our stronger Group positioning this year and particularly the associated increase in banquet and catering revenues. As a result of a significant increase in food and beverage revenues, our third quarter same-property total RevPAR increased by 3.7% in the third quarter as compared to last year, despite our RevPAR being flat year-over-year.

The third quarter increase was again mainly driven by Grand Hyatt Scottsdale. For the first nine months of the year, the impact of increased food and beverage revenues was even greater as same-property total RevPAR increased by 8.5%. Our strong group base for the fourth quarter and for 2026 give us optimism that we will be able to continue to experience outsized total RevPAR gains in the quarters ahead.

Third quarter same-property hotel EBITDA of $47 million was 0.7% above 2024 levels, and hotel EBITDA margin decreased 60 basis points. Excluding Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, third quarter hotel EBITDA decreased 7.8% and hotel EBITDA margin decreased 160 basis points.

For the first nine months of the year, same-property hotel EBITDA of $205.4 million increased by 12.6% above 2024 levels, and hotel EBITDA margin increased 101 basis points. Excluding Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, year-to-date hotel EBITDA increased 3.9% and also EBITDA margin was essentially flat. We remain pleased with our operators' efforts to control expenses in a continued inflationary environment.

Turning to our capital expenditure projects. We now project that we will spend approximately $90 million on property improvements during the year, which is a $10 million increase compared to the midpoint from our prior CapEx guidance. This increase is due to two factors: First, the anticipated completion of some additional capital projects that were originally planned at various properties as we have been able to mitigate the impact of any potential tariff-related cost increases.

And second, the costs we will be incurring in 2025 for a comprehensive reconcepting of the food and beverage operations at W. Nashville. Even with this increase, we still anticipate spending approximately $50 million less on capital expenditures in 2025 than we projected at the beginning of the year.

We are extremely excited about the upcoming relaunch of the food and beverage venues at W Nashville that we announced in our release this morning. We extensively evaluated several options to increase the appeal of food and beverage outlets in hotel, which could drive incremental F&B revenues and further enhance the desirability of the hotel for all demand segments.

After completing this thorough process, we are pleased to have reached an agreement with Jose Andres Group, under which Jose Andres Group will operate and/or license essentially all of the food and beverage venues at the hotel. We believe strongly that the combination of the operational and marketing expertise of Marriott and Jose Andres Group will drive incremental revenues and hotel EBITDA and make the hotel an even more exciting destination. We will be making an additional capital investment of approximately $9 million to effectuate this change.

However, given the already outstanding physical condition and quality of the hotel's existing venues, this capital will be largely spent on FF&E and branding elements as well as kitchen equipment and back-of-the-house improvements. We are projecting that the relaunch of the F&B outlets will add between $3 million and $5 million to hotel EBITDA upon stabilization through increases in food and beverage and rooms revenues, which we believe should result in the hotel generating in excess of $20 million of hotel EBITDA in the next few years.

Barry will provide additional details on this exciting W Nashville F&B relaunch during his remarks. As we look ahead to the remainder of the year, we remain cautious in our near-term outlook, which is reflected by slightly reduced expectations for the fourth quarter. For the full year, we now expect a same-property RevPAR increase of 4%, and adjusted EBITDAre of $254 million at the midpoint of our updated full year guidance. Atish will provide additional details on these modest adjustments to guidance during his remarks.

As has been the case for most of the year, Group business continues to be a driver of our RevPAR growth, with leisure softening a bit this year, as we had anticipated, while business transient continues to improve gradually. We saw a continuation of this trend again in October. We are encouraged by the approximately 5.8% RevPAR growth that we project our same-property portfolio will achieve in October, which represents a meaningful improvement over our portfolio's third quarter performance. With strong overall Group base for the fourth quarter, we again anticipate significant growth in food and beverage revenues during the quarter as well.

Looking ahead to 2026, we believe that Grand Hyatt Scottsdale will continue to ramp consistent with our underwriting, and we expect good demand across the portfolio to be robust and drive outsized non-rooms revenue growth. We continue to believe strongly in the long-term growth prospects for our well-located, diversified and high-quality portfolio in 2026 and beyond.

Barry when will provide more details on our third quarter operating results, the W Nashville Food & Beverage relaunch and our other capital projects.

Thank you, Marcel, and good morning, everyone. For the third quarter, our same-property portfolio RevPAR was $164.5, flat to the third quarter in 2024 based on occupancy of 66.3% at an average daily rate of $248.09. Strength in non-room spend, notably banquet revenues, resulted in total RevPAR of $289.76 for the quarter and $329.6 for the year-to-date, an increase of 3.7% and 8.5%, respectively, when compared to the same periods in 2024.

Excluding Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, third quarter RevPAR was $167.87, a decrease of 2.6% as compared to 2024. This reflected a decrease of 289 basis points in occupancy for the period and an increase of 1.5% in average daily rate as compared to the third quarter of 2024.

Our top performing hotels in the quarter were Grand Hyatt Scottsdale with RevPAR up over 270%, Andaz Savannah up 15.3%, Waldorf Astoria Atlanta Buckhead up nearly 14%, Grand Bohemian Mountain Brook up 13.2%, Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, up 12%, Renaissance Atlanta Waverly up 9.5%, and Grand Bohemian Hotel Orlando up nearly 9%, Bohemian Hotel Savanna Riverfront up 8.3% and the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City up nearly 6%. Strengthen Group business and continued improvement in corporate demand was a driver behind success at most of these properties.

Hotels have experienced RevPAR weakness compared to the third quarter of 2024 included Loews New Orleans, all three Houston hotels, Marriott Dallas Downtown, Hyatt Centric Key West and Kimpton Hotel Palomar, Philadelphia. New Orleans, Dallas and Philadelphia suffered from a lack of convention center activity relative to last year.

And the Houston hotels were challenged by a comparison with significant amount of business related to Hurricane Beryl that they captured last year. General leisure softness and return of inventory that was offline last summer impacted Key West. Looking at each month of the quarter compared to 2024, the live RevPAR was $161.98, down 1.7%, August RevPAR was $154.43, down 1.5%, and September RevPAR was $177.52, up 3.2%.

Excluding Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, compared to last year, business declined in July and August, largely due to the weakness in the Houston market and softer leisure demand overall. Performance in September significantly improved as we got out of the leisure-heavy summer months and saw strong Group business as well as a significant increase in corporate travel.

Business from our largest corporate accounts grew modestly in Q3 with declines in both July and August, but a significant increase in September as compared to Q3 of 2024. Business from the largest volume accounts continued to be down meaningfully from 2019, but has continued to grow throughout the year. Group business continues to be a bright spot across the portfolio despite the seasonal shift from corporate to association-related Group resulting in the lowest quarterly Group growth for the year.

For the third quarter, excluding Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, Group room revenues were virtually flat compared to the third quarter of last year due to modest declines in both July and August, while September was more in line with the trends we have seen throughout the year, up approximately 5%. Food and beverage revenue from banquets declined slightly during the quarter compared to last year as a result of the mix of Group business.

Now turning to expenses and profit. Third quarter same-property total revenue increased 3.8% compared to the third quarter of 2024. Hotel EBITDA margin decreased by 60 basis points, resulting in hotel EBITDA of nearly $47 million, an increase of 0.7%. For the year-to-date, hotel EBITDA increased 12.6%, with margin improvement of 101 basis points compared to the same period in 2024. Since Grand Hyatt Scottsdale was undergoing its transformative renovation last year, the following P&L analysis is presented for the remainder of the same-property portfolio compared to last year.

Hotel EBITDA for the quarter was $46.7 million, a decrease of 7.8% on a total revenue decrease of 0.7%, resulting in a margin decline of 160 basis points. However, we are pleased with the ability of our hotels management teams to control expenses in light of softer revenues. Rooms department expenses increased by 1.5% on a 2.6% decline in RevPAR. Food and beverage growth was muted at 0.4% with expense growth of 0.8%.

Other operating department income, including SPA, parking golf revenues was up 6.6%. Miscellaneous income was up 7.8%, resulting in a total RevPAR decline of just 0.7%. In the undistributed departments, expenses in A&G and sales and marketing were well controlled. A&G increased by 1.5% compared to last year, while sales and marketing expenses grew by 2%, continuing the moderating trend we've experienced over the past several quarters. Property operations and utility expenses were up 2.6% and 0.5%, respectively.

Turning to CapEx. During the third quarter, we invested $19.9 million in portfolio improvements, which brings our total for the year to $70.7 million. These amounts are inclusive of capital expenditures related to the completion of the transformative renovation of Grand Hyatt Scottsdale.

We completed improvements in the building facade and parking lot during the third quarter, which now marks the full completion of this transformational renovation. During the third quarter, we made significant progress on select upgrades to guestrooms at several properties, including Renaissance Plano Waverly, Marriott San Francisco Airport, Hyatt Centric Key West, Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, Grand Bohemian Hotel Mountain Brook, Grand Bohemian Charleston and Kimpton River Place.

This work, which is expected to be substantially complete by year-end is being done during periods of lower occupancy, particularly over the holiday season. We are continuing to perform significant infrastructure upgrades at 10 hotels this year, including facade waterproofing, filler replacements, elevator and escalator monetization projects and fire alarm system upgrades as business levels allow. The majority of this work will be completed in the fourth quarter or early 2026.

In the fourth quarter, we will begin work on a limited guest room renovation of Fairmont Pittsburgh, which will be completed in the first quarter of 2026, and renovation of the M Club at Marriott Dallas Downtown, which we expect to be completed in early 2026.

During the third quarter, we entered into agreements with Jose Andres Group, also known as JAG, pursuant with Chegg will operate in or license substantially all of the food and beverage outlets at W Nashville. JAG is restaurant management arm of Jose Andres, a globally acclaimed chef respiratory and media personality that operates nearly 40 restaurants, bars and lounges across the globe, including several prominent lodging properties. We believe this comprehensive relationship will leverage the superb physical attributes to create unique destination dining venues at W Nashville.

The all-new food and beverage programming will replace the existing venues in the hotel, and will include proven JAG concepts such as Zaytinya, and Eastern Mediterranean concept that will serve lunch and dinner. [Bazaar Mar], a coastal seafood and premium meat concept that will be open for dinner; and Butterfly, a high-energy rooftop bar with a Mexican inspired menu. In addition, there will be a completely new pool experience that will feature an expanded bar, upgraded food offerings and refreshed outdoor spaces.

Modifications were made at the existing living room, which will become the (inaudible) venue, while continuing to service the hotel's lobby bar, featuring a revised menu of unique cocktails and food offerings. In addition, the hotel will offer premium Jose Andres Group design banquet and catering menus, which will complement existing offerings in order to enhance group experiences and drive incremental food and beverage revenues.

Modifications to the venues will begin in the fourth quarter in a staggered approach intended to minimize disruption, and all venues are expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2026. Our in-house project management team will provide direction and oversight to the renovation process, which gives us significant confidence in achieving on-time project completion and the ability to stay within our budget. We are incredibly excited about this relationship and the repositioning of the F&B outlets at W Nashville.

With that, I will turn the call over to Atish.

Thanks, Barry. I will provide an update on our balance sheet, discuss our guidance and provide some early thoughts on 2026. On our balance sheet, it continues to be a source of strength. At quarter end, we had approximately $1.4 billion of outstanding debt. About one-quarter of our debt was at variable rates and three-quarters of our debt was at fixed rates. Our weighted average interest rate at quarter end was 5.63%.

At quarter end, our leverage ratio was approximately 5 times trailing 12-month net debt to EBITDA. We expect our leverage ratio to further decline as Grand Hyatt Scottsdale continues to stabilize over the next two years. As a reminder, we have no preferred equity or senior capital.

Our debt maturities continue to be well laddered with a weighted average duration of 3.5 years at quarter end. As to the $52 million mortgage loan that matures next March, we intend to pay it off ahead of maturity with cash on hand. After that pay off, 28 or 30 hotels will be free of property level debt, reflecting both a source of balance sheet flexibility and strength. As to liquidity, we finished the third quarter with $188 million of available cash, excluding restricted cash.

Our $500 million revolver remained undrawn. Therefore, total liquidity was $688 million. Our Board authorized a third quarter dividend of $0.14 per share. If annualized, this reflects over 4.5% yield on our current share price. As to payout ratio, if annualized, this reflects a payout ratio of just under 50% of funds available for distribution, or FAD. Our long-term target is a payout ratio of 60% to 70% of FAD, consistent with our pre-pandemic payout range.

During the quarter, we repurchased $12.3 million of common stock at a weighted average price of $12.66 per share. Year to date, we have repurchased $83.8 million of common stock at a weighted average price of $12.59 per share. Since the beginning of this year, we have repurchased 6.6% of our outstanding shares as of year-end 2024. We have $134.1 million of remaining capacity under our share repurchase authorization. We continue to believe our shares trade at a significant discount to the value of the assets we own based upon their earnings potential in the years to come.

Turning next to my next topic, our current 2025 guidance. We'll start with our full year RevPAR outlook. We expect RevPAR growth of 4% at the midpoint. The 50-basis-point reduction in the midpoint of our full year guide reflects lower expected RevPAR growth across our portfolio in the fourth quarter, exclusive of Grand Hyatt Scottsdale. On a full year basis, we continue to believe that Grand Hyatt Scottsdale will represent 300 of the 400 basis points of expected growth.

Given our preliminary estimate of October RevPAR increasing approximately 5.8%, our full year guide at the midpoint reflects an estimated RevPAR increase of 4.5% for the last two months of the year. Underpinning our guidance is Group pace, which, for November and December, is up 12%. Excluding Scottsdale, it's up about 5% for the final two months of the year.

As to hotel EBITDA margin, we expect full year same-property margin growth of nearly 90 basis points, which is about 60 basis points higher than the margin growth we expected at the beginning of the year. The strength we have seen has been from non-rooms revenue growth and slightly more of our rooms revenue growth coming from rate than originally expected.

Moving ahead to our estimate for full year adjusted EBITDAre is now $254 million or down $2 million from our last guide at the midpoint. This reflects the change in full year RevPAR, partially offset by continued strong non-rooms revenue generation. And finally, our adjusted FFO per diluted share guidance midpoint is now $1.72, which is a decrease of $0.01 versus our prior guidance. This reflects the $2 million decrease in full year adjusted EBITDAre and adjusted FFO, offset by the reduction -- by reduction in weighted average diluted share count.

Our current adjusted FFO per share guidance is 4% higher than our guide at the beginning of the year and 8% higher than our 2024 adjusted FFO per share. Our guidance for interest expense, cash G&A expense and income tax expense are unchanged. Looking ahead to 2026, we would like to provide some initial thoughts. First, on Group demand, which by way of reminder, is about 35% of our overall demand mix. Pace continues to be healthy.

As of the end of September, about 50% of our Group's group rooms revenue for 2026 was definite. Pace for 2026 was up in the mid-teens percentage range. Excluding Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, it was up in the low teens percentage range. This is consistent with 2026 group pace at the end of the second quarter. As to Group revenue production for next year, it was healthy in the third quarter. During the quarter, we booked 13% more Group revenue than we did in the third quarter last year. Even excluding Scottsdale, Group revenue production was up 12% versus the third quarter of 2024.

Looking across our larger group markets, the largest gains in group pace are in Northern California, in part due to the Super Bowl, and in markets such as Houston, Scottsdale, Orlando and Portland. Our 2026 group pace reflects anticipated strong citywide convention demand in several of our markets. Citywide convention pace is up in the double-digit percentage range in Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Portland. While our hotels in the aggregate rely more on in-house than citywide business, our hotels in these markets do benefit when citywide calendars are strong and the markets experience compression.

In a few cases, citywide pace is being helped by the World Cup, which will come to five of our markets, including Dallas and Atlanta that are hosting semifinal games. In addition to citywide pace, our Group outlook reflects our hotel operators focused pursuit of this demand segment, the capital investments we've made in meeting space and Group focused amenities and the strength of branded hotels and capturing high-value Group business. We expect 2026 to be another record year for Group and, as a result, another strong year for total RevPAR growth, which we expect will outpace RevPAR growth again.

As to transient demand on the business side, we continue to see steady improvement in demand from the large accounts. On the leisure side, we've seen the normalization temper in most of our key leisure markets with several having grown top line during the third quarter and year-to-date. As such, the preliminary outlook for 2026 appears to be more stable on the leisure side.

And finally, a major driver for growth next year will be the continued ramp at Grand Hyatt Scottsdale. Our initial expectations for 2026 continue to track our underwriting. By way of reminder, our underwriting was that full year property hotel EBITDA would increase from the low $20 million range this year to the low $30 million range next year. Given the timing of the completion of the renovation and the seasonality in the market, we expect most of the growth to occur in the first half of the year.

And with that, we will turn the call back over to Becky to begin our Q&A session.

(Operator Instructions)

Michael Bellisario, Baird.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. First question for you, Atish, on your dividend. I know you mentioned that you're paying out less than your target, but maybe just where is the current payout this year going to land in terms of where you see this year's taxable income?

Well, I don't have that in front of me, but I will say that we continue to utilize NOLs that we generated coming off of COVID. So we're finding the balance of providing both a good payout relative to past levels as well as utilizing those NOLs. So -- and we'll pull that relative to taxable number for you and provide that.

Okay. Thanks. And then just a second question, probably for Barry, just on the Group outlook commentary. How much of the pace increase for next year's price versus volume? And then just in terms of production, what type of accounts, what type of groups are booking? And what are you hearing from meeting planners today? Thanks.

Yeah. The setup for next year, obviously, as Atish mentioned, is really good and it's quite strong. It's a little more in volume, but rate growth is good. I mean better rate growth than we've than we've seen in the last year or two. So it's a very, very nice setup on the group side.

We are continuing to see a little bit of a shift from corporate business back into a more normalized association business within the portfolio, particularly at the largest resorts. And I guess I think if you look back, right, we were really, coming out of COVID corporate was wanted every day, and they were ready to fill in. Association is a little slow in rebooking, but we're seeing that come through now.

And I think that's part of what you saw in our mix in Q3 was that whereas corporates had kind of filled Q3 in the last couple of years. That's where we were start seeing the shift back to the more normalized relative ratios of association versus corporate. But both segments are quite strong looking into next year.

Thank you.

Jack Armstrong, Wells Fargo.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Could you break out what the impact of the government shutdown has been, if any, on the portfolio? And with the uncertainty there, how confident you're seeing in the full year RevPAR guide?

Well, thus far, it's been fairly limited within our portfolio. We've spoken before about the fact that we are not heavily dependent on government business. Obviously, we continue to check with all of our properties to see if we're seeing any particular impact. There have been a few cancellations, but it's been relatively minimal thus far. So I think if you kind of contrast our portfolio to some of the peers, our exposure to that type of business is probably a little bit more limited.

Now if there is a prolonged shutdown that is causing more issues as it relates to air traffic control issues and people being more concerned about being able to travel and those types of things, then obviously, it could impact us as well going forward. So, so far, we're not assuming any very significant impact from the government shut down over the next few months. And that's really based on kind of the situation as we see it today.

Helpful. Thank you. And could you maybe provide an update for us on what you're seeing in transaction markets, and also what your level of interest is? I'm trying to get some more dispositions done over the next year.

Yeah, sure. I mean it seems like kind of contrasting it to where things were maybe 6 to 12 months ago. It does seem like there are some more hotel transactions coming to -- potential hotel transactions coming to market. It does seem like there's a little bit more volume that the broker community is seeing.

And as it relates to us, I mean, obviously, we're still looking at the various ways how we can allocate capital, and given our cost of capital at this point, especially with how attractive our own portfolio looks and share buybacks continue to look probably more attractive than acquisitions at this point, I wouldn't expect us to be really active on the acquisition side here in the very near future.

I think a lot of that's going to have to do with what happens with pricing in the private markets if there is maybe a little bit more now softness, if you will, if prices are coming down a little bit, and they come a little bit closer to what we view to be something that is a good use of capital for us. But I don't foresee that here really in the very short term.

As it relates to dispositions, we'll continue to look at what we've always done. This doesn't make sense to continue to fine-tune the portfolio slightly, especially when it comes to assets that may need some additional capital where we don't feel the appropriate ROI might be -- we might be able to get the right appropriate ROI on those projects. So we'll continue to evaluate that. I wouldn't expect any wholesale changes, but we certainly could see another disposition or two over the next 12, 18 months as we continue to fine-tune and review our portfolio.

Really heplful. Thanks for the color.

David Katz, Jefferies.

We are not getting any audio, so we will move on to our next question from Ari Klein, BMO Capital Markets.

Thanks and good morning. With regards to the (inaudible) expectations for 4Q, where do you see that play out the most? It sounds like it's predominantly leisure, but was it broad-based across markets? And I guess, as leisure stabilize, do you still see it getting weaker? Thanks.

Yeah. Thanks, Ari, for that question. So with regard to the fourth quarter, it is certainly more on the transient side combination of leisure and business transient that we nudged down our expectations ever so slightly. And really, it's not any particular market. As I mentioned, Scottsdale continues to show a lot of strength because gap is really more broad-based.

There's no specific market. I will point out that Houston was a pretty big headwind for us in the third quarter, and that certainly something in the past. As we look at the fourth quarter, we're expecting a little bit of growth in Houston, and in the month of October, we were actually about flattish in Houston. So that big drag that we had in the third quarter for (inaudible) tough comparison dissipates for the fourth quarter, and it's actually positive.

Yes. I will just add that as Atish really points out there, is that part of the reduction in our RevPAR guidance for the full year is obviously also attributable to what we -- what happened in the third quarter. So it's not that we've brought our RevPAR down entirely in the fourth quarter, and that's what got us down essentially 50 basis points at the midpoint.

Some of that was some of the additional weakness that we saw in Houston a little bit in excess of what we anticipated. The reason why we still got to our numbers meeting our expectations was because we saw some greater strength on the out-of-room spend that really got us back to the total RevPAR number that we -- that was more closely matching what we were expecting in the third quarter.

Thanks. And then maybe just on the changes at the W Nashville for F&B. I guess that piece of the business has been a struggle for a while. How quickly do you think you can get to that $3 million to $5 million of incremental EBITDA from the changes? And I think I heard (inaudible) now you expect the hotel to ultimately stabilize in the low 20s. I just wanted to make sure that's correct. And I guess the prior range, or the original range of 25% to 30%. I just want to double check on that.

Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously, it's going to take a couple of few years to get to that stabilized number. We -- as I pointed out and as Barry kind of spoke about in his comments too, we really anticipate this to help drive not just the F&B revenues, but also just make the hotel a more desirable location overall and more of a destination even than it has been to date.

As you point out, I mean, clearly, we've given a time here. We've worked kind of tirelessly with Marriott to try to improve the F&B operations, and jointly with them, have worked on coming to a solution that we believe is going to be very attractive for to over the next few years. So I think that is something that's going to take a little bit of time to stabilize here. We've essentially, they've been running in the mid-teens of EBITDA over the last few years.

So clearly, we were looking to -- for ways to drive what we think that this hotel can produce for us over the next few years. We have, to your point, tempered our expectations from where we started our underwriting since we aren't close to those numbers that you quoted yet. We do think that this will give us that additional lift of $3 million to $5 million as a result of this this F&B change over the next several years.

And what's still going on in the Nashville market overall, obviously, is that we're still going through some stabilization in the markets with the supply that's getting -- the high-end supply that was added over the last several years that are still getting absorbed into the market. So over the next several years, we expect to see kind of the bump coming from the F&B change that we're doing here, but also with the markets kind of improving and stabilizing.

It's been a tougher leisure year, especially in that market as well. So we do expect that to get better over the next several years. We're obviously not saying we're going to put a ceiling on where we think the earnings can go here, but just realistically looking at where the earnings have been over the last several years, what we think the F&B will do to help the operations there.

We've set our expectations now to say over the next several years, we expect to get kind of north of that $20 million number. And then hopefully, we'll grow from there. And that's -- it's a great asset. It's a great market, still a lot of positivity as far as what's going on in the market. So we continue to have high hopes for how ultimately -- where ultimately this property will go.

Thanks for all the color. Appreciate it.

David Katz, Jefferies.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my question again. Appreciate it. I wanted to just get your perspective on leisure. We've obviously been hearing about some of the weakness in leisure. In your opinion or from your perspective, is it travelers who are choosing not to travel to defer to travel, are they backing at price and perhaps trading down? What would you classify as the weakness -- the source of the weakness as far as you can tell?

Well, I'll start off with kind of a global comment on it. I think when we looked at -- when we look at the setup for this year, and I'm sure you recall when we even spoke at the beginning of the year, our expectation was really kind of the way it has played out for every segment, which was strong group business for us this year. We did expect business transient to kind of slowly keep recovering. And we did expect some softness in leisure compared to prior years because there is still this normalization that was kind of going on from these kind of outsized levels of leisure travel that we saw over the last few years.

So I would say that it hasn't changed that much from what our initial expectations were. I think what you've seen overall is that there's obviously been a lot of discussion this year about consumer spending overall, about consumer spending on travel. There has been -- it appears to have been clearly more in the lower segments that have been impacted more significantly than the higher segments like where we play.

So it hasn't been quite a severe on the higher end, but we are still dealing with a lot of uncertainty out there in the market on various economic issues, obviously, dealing with the fact that international outbound is still greater than international inbound, alternative travel that obviously has been also appealing for people, whether that's cruises or other things. So I think all of those things kind of play into it.

Now that being said, and Atish pointed this out in his comments, as we look ahead to next year and going a little bit more granular as it relates to us, I think that we are still seeing a very similar setup on the Group side. We're -- we've got a really good group base going into next year. Business transient that is subject to some of the macroeconomic issues, obviously, whether that continues to kind of gradually improve, but that's still our expectation at this point.

And we do think that leisure has probably kind of found its -- found more of its footing in our portfolio where some of these markets are as stabilized and where we do think that we could hopefully see some growth on that again going into next year. And I'll just kind of leave it at that. I don't know, Barry or Atish wants to add anything to that. But that's our view of kind of what we're seeing happening in the market at this point.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

Austin Wurschmidt, KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Barry, you had commented the business from your large corporate accounts was up significantly in September. I guess, first, any markets you'd call out as seeing sort of an outsized increase? And then second, is the pace of that improvement still less than you may have expected given the comments that Atish made about just transient demand broadly? You had kind of dialed expectations back on both the business and the leisure side? Thanks.

Yeah. In terms of strength, no doubt, Northern California and Santa Clara in particular are seeing significant corporate growth. I mean we all know what's kind of gone on in tech this year, and Santa Clara is ideally positioned both for tech as well as specifically within some of the -- some specific AI-driven accounts that are maybe either directly or indirectly focused on that. I think we've seen some other markets that -- where we've seen a good quality corporate demand.

We see it in some of the smaller markets like Pittsburgh, we're seeing that. We're seeing it in DC where Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City is a little bit outside of the government -- of direct government business. So with the strong accounts that we have in Pentagon City. We're seeing it in Atlanta. So markets like that are kind of a traditionally strong business markets. That's where we've seen the strength in in corporate demand this year.

In terms of across the portfolio, it continues to improve every month. I think relative to expectations, overall, it's probably where we want to be. There are still some markets that are -- that ebb and flow, I think particularly based on seasonality. It's part of -- in addition to the impact from Hurricane Beryl in Houston, we did see a little bit softer corporate demand in the quarterly, we expected in both Houston and Dallas.

But again, we feel like that segment clearly is growing. We're particularly getting -- we're starting to -- or continuing to sell out more Tuesday and Wednesday nights, which is also great because not only does it drive volume, but it enables the hotel to really drive compression on those nights as well. So it's a good setup and we certainly see that continuing into next year.

That's helpful. And then just going back to leisure demand, Marcel, you provided a lot of good detail to the earlier question. But I guess, at a high level, would you still expect leisure to lag the overall portfolio in 2026? Or could the demand normalization provide a little bit better pricing power? And maybe it's a little more on par of what you're seeing in just the transient segment overall? Thanks.

Yeah, I think we could. I think Atish pointed it out that we've definitely seen some stabilization in some of the more leisure-oriented markets. Clearly, we still expect Group to be the leading segment for us as it relates to growth next year. Our setup on the Group side is obviously very strong.

Grand Hyatt Scottsdale has a lot to do with that too, continues to ramp and continues to build greater group base at that property, obviously. But even throughout the rest of the portfolio, as Atish pointed out, our group basis is very, very strong going into next year. So I kind of expect a similar results next year as it relates to the segments.

Group will continue to lead. And I do think that we could see that there certainly could be a scenario where leisure and business transient are more on par as it relates to what kind of growth we can see out of those segments.

Very helpful. That's all from me, thanks, everyone.

Thanks, everyone. We currently have no further questions. So I'll hand back to Chair and CEO, Marcel Verbaas, for closing remarks.

Thanks, Becky. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Appreciate your interest in the company. Appreciate the opportunity to share our results for the third quarter and what we believe is a very good setup going into next year. We have a great portfolio that we'll continue to see the benefits from that going forward and hope everyone has a great Halloween.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.