RevPAR at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts in the first quarter at its U.S. hotels was flat versus the same time a year ago. Outside the U.S., RevPAR was down 1% (expectations were that it would be down as much as 3%).
It was not an unexpected result: the majority of hotels in the segments that Wyndham operates have struggled as consumers pull back in their travel spend. Still, there continue to be pockets of growth for the hotel franchisor, especially on the technology side.
System-wide rooms grew 4% YOY, while Wyndham’s development pipeline grew 3% YOY to a record of more than 259,000 rooms and more than 2,200 hotels. Approximately 43% of the pipeline is in the U.S., while around 77% of the pipeline is new construction and, of those, 35% have broken ground.
Net income remained flat YOY at $61 million, while ancillary revenues increased 21%, much of it tied to Wyndham’s the credit card program. In March of last year, Wyndham renewed its credit card agreement with Barclay,
“We delivered a strong start to the year, highlighted by record-level first-quarter openings and a continued expansion of our development pipeline,” said Geoff Ballotti, president and chief executive officer. “As U.S. RevPAR in our economy and midscale segments continues to recover ahead of expectations, we approach the peak leisure summer season with increasing optimism. We’ve never been more confident in our ability to drive sustained long-term value creation for franchisees, guests and shareholders by adding high-quality, FeePAR-accretive hotels to our portfolio, growing ancillary revenues and scaling AI to further differentiate our industry-leading technology platform.”
Wyndham continues to make hay on the technology side, including partnerships with Salesforce, as part of a more than $450-million investment. Wyndham is making a concerted investment in AI. Its agentic AI solutions interact with guests in real-time to answer questions, make bookings, check them in, offer upsells and increase service levels, all in the pursuit to save owners money and generate more.
On a call with analysts, Ballotti underscored the contribution of Wyndham Connect, its guest engagement and operations software platform that uses AI to increase revenue and streamline operations. It’s now available more than 1,100 hotels. “We are taking millions and millions of dollars of costs out of these hotels,” he said. “We’re taking millions of guest calls, millions of questions away from people that would have to answer them, and we’re autonomously handling those labor-intensive tasks. That’s what’s saving the money and resulting in better interaction with guests.”
For instance, AI has helped eliminate dropped calls and increased handle times by 25%, he said.
The upshot of increased reliance on AI is the decrease in labor force. “We’re looking at everything we can do to drive incremental revenue to hotels—at how much margin we can drive by taking a guest service agent off of the payroll and allow them to free up staff,” Ballotti said. “We’re looking at the percentage that we’re able to drive to the hotel from a direct-booking basis because the call wasn’t dropped or wasn’t lost. Our job is to make sure that these small business owners are engaged with these tools that can drive hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Ballotti said that Wyndham Connect is repsonsible for adding 300 basis points of increased direct contribution.
Wyndham continues to navigate the insolvency of its largest European franchisee, Revo Hospitality Group, which led to a $160 million charge in early 2026. Revo operated, but did not own, over 260 properties, with significant exposure in Germany and Austria. Wyndham said it is exercising “all available remedies to recoup our investments.” It foreclosed and took ownership of two properties, which are expected to contribute about $10 million in revenue. “Our plan is to stabilize and improve profitability of these two assets as explore strategic options for them,” said Amit Sripathi, CFO of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.