Dive Brief:
- Marriott International posted “excellent” performance for the fourth quarter and full-year 2024, with global RevPAR up year over year for both periods, as well as strong rooms growth, CEO Anthony Capuano detailed in a Tuesday earnings report.
- Marriott’s full-year global RevPAR rose 4.3% year over year and increased 5% year over year in the fourth quarter alone. Additionally, Marriott reported record gross room additions of more than 123,000 for the year, with net rooms growing 6.8% to more than 1.7 million rooms worldwide at year-end.
- Capuano attributed the results to strong travel demand, which continues to gain momentum into 2025. Capuano is “incredibly optimistic” about Marriott’s future, including continued gains on the development front, he noted in the report. Looking forward, the company will see the results of an organizational restructuring that was implemented at the beginning of January, he added.
Dive Insight:
Strong travel demand across the leisure, business transient and group segments drove performance growth for Marriott in 2024 and is anticipated to continue to do so in 2025, according to Capuano.
Leisure, which comprised the largest portion of global room nights at 44% in Q4, had its strongest RevPAR growth quarter of the year and was the fastest growing of Marriott’s customer segments, Capuano said during a Tuesday earnings call.
Fourth quarter leisure RevPAR grew 6% globally and 4% in the U.S. and Canada, driven by gains in both room nights and ADR, “with strength across all tiers — from luxury to select-service,” Capuano said.
The business transient segment, meanwhile, contributed 33% of global room nights in the fourth quarter. And “solid gains” in ADR drove business transient RevPAR up 3% year over year globally and up 4% in the U.S. and Canada, per Capuano.
“Marriott is well-positioned to take advantage of the continued momentum in travel,” he said in a statement. Capuano noted during the call that the drop in occupancy around the November presidential election was not as impactful as initially projected.
Capuano also expects continued development growth on the heels of a strong year for systemwide rooms growth and pipeline generation.
In 2024, Marriott signed a record number of new deals, with its development pipeline reaching more than 577,000 rooms at year-end, per the earnings report. For the full year, conversions represented more than one-third of Marriott’s room signings and more than half of its room additions.
Marriott’s portfolio and pipeline growth in Q4 was driven by its acquisition of Postcard Cabins and its subsequent long-term agreement with Trailborn. In 2025, Marriott intends to launch an outdoor-focused collection anchored by the two deals.
Also in 2025, Marriott will begin to see the results of an organizational restructuring that took effect last month aimed at enhancing “effectiveness and efficiency across the company.” The initiative resulted in more than 800 corporate layoffs that impacted top-level executives.
“Internally, there is energy across the enterprise about how streamlined our decision-making will be as a result of this,” Capuano said during the call. “I have heard parallel enthusiasm from owners and franchisees.”
