For all the discussion around artificial intelligence and how it will remake the way customers book travel, there’s another side: the presumptive cost savings to franchisees. That’s how Geoff Ballotti, president and CEO of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, framed it during his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. The first three slides of an investor presentation highlighting Wyndham’s AI endeavors bolsters its approach to it.
One thing is clear: Wyndham’s use of AI is out of beta and into practice. “We’re no longer piloting these,” Ballotti said, referring to Wyndham Connect, a trained large language model in partnership with Canary Technologies that allows more than 5,000 of Wyndham’s hotels today to talk to guests via AI.
Wyndham has put more than $425 million of investment toward AI. With Anthropic Claude, users can enable Wyndham’s connector, which allows for a fully conversational experience and direct-booking on Wyndham’s platform. Last November, Wyndham and Google partnered to create an agentic booking experience on AI Mode in search. During Q2 2026, guests will be able to discover Wyndham properties through natural, conversational interactions.
While AI sets a new way for customers to find and book hotels, the intent remains for them to book direct. “In Claude today, the guest receives a link to complete the transaction on our brand.com site—ChatGPT works the same way,” Ballotti said.
AI, Ballotti said, is also a tool to derive more spend out of each booked guest. Wyndham Connect monetizes upsell requests, including early check-in/late check-out, room upgrades and dining. It received around 885,000 upsell requests in
2025. At the same time, it’s removing costs. Wyndham Connect selef served around 25% of guest inquiries in 2025 without on-property staff intervention.
“It’s taking costs for our franchisees and small business owners out of their front offices,” Ballotti said. “It’s allowing them to make extra money by selling early check ins and late checkouts and upgrades and amenities. And it’s providing them with an economic platform free of charge that they did not have before to monetize that platform.”
Ballotti said that a Howard Johnson in Anaheim, Calif., by using the platform is making over $10,000 a month in incremental fees that are going to that hotels bottom line. “That’s $120,000 a year,” he said.
AI agents, Ballotti said, are also handling numerous guest calls that are saving franchisees on labor costs.
Later this year, Wyndham will unveil next-generation, cloud-native mobile and web platforms, that is says will reshape the guest journey with AI-powered, intent-driven discovery that expands languages, payment options and personalization.
Technology, however, isn’t a panacea. Wyndham’s fourth-quarter global RevPAR decreased 6% compared to the same period last year, reflecting declines of 8% in the U.S. and 1% internationally. For the full-year, global RevPAR decreased 3% compared to 2024, reflecting a 4% decline in the U.S. and flat growth internationally. U.S. results reflected a 270 basis-point reduction in occupancy and a 120 basis-point decline in ADR.
The start of 2026 remains negative, but should pick up later in the year, aided by such events as FIFA World Cup and America250. For full-year 2026, Wyndham expects a global RevPAR range of down 1.5% to up 0.5%.
System-wide rooms grew 4% YOY in the fourth quarter 2025. The development pipeline grew 3% YOY and 1% sequentially to a record 259,000 rooms.
Wyndham cited softer results in Florida, Texas and California, though Ballotti said Texas saw improvement in Q1 of 600 basis points compared to last year, while Florida also saw growth. The Midwest has helped soften the blow. “We’re seeing continued strength, as we talked about in the Midwest, with Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Michigan all up mid-to-low single digits,” he said.
Ballotti remains optimistic going into the new year. “It’s starting to feel like demand is beginning to really improve, that those green shoots are beginning to come with rate. Upscale hotels have been able to price much more aggressively than our chain scales, where the guest is obviously more price sensitive,” he said.
While conversions have been a large mode of addition for lodging companies, Ballotti said he was encouraged by trends in new construction. “There’s been a lot of talk across the industry that new-construction pipelines are pressured. We’re not seeing it. We’re seeing growth in our new construction executions,” he said, up 15% versus 2024 and new-construction openings domestically increasing 50% YOY.
During the preparation of Wyndham’s year-end 2025 financial statements, its largest European franchisee, Revo Hospitality Group, filed for self-administration, which is the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. As a result, Wyndham wrote down $160 million in charges tied to the collapse. Starting in the fourth quarter of 2025, Wyndham began deferring all revenues related to Revo due to uncertainty around collectability.
“It’s really early to speculate on what potential outcomes could look like,” said Kurt Albert, interim CFO of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. “They want to emerge from insolvency this year, but we also believe these proceedings could last months.”
