Marriott CEO sees ‘another year of solid growth’ in 2024

Anthony Capuano, President and CEO, said, “Our team delivered excellent results in 2023, as demand for our industry leading portfolio of properties and offerings around the world continued to grow. Full year global RevPAR rose 15 percent, net rooms grew 4.7 percent, and our fee-driven, asset-light business model generated record levels of cash. In the fourth quarter, worldwide RevPAR rose 7 percent. International RevPAR grew 17 percent, with particular strength in Asia Pacific and Europe. In the U.S. & Canada, fourth quarter RevPAR rose over 3 percent. Group revenue at our hotels increased 7 percent compared to the 2022 fourth quarter, driven by solid rate increases. While already significantly above 2019 levels, hotel leisure revenue rose again, up 2 percent. Business transient revenue at our hotels grew 3 percent from the year-ago quarter, with demand from large corporate customers continuing to make gains. Our development team had a stellar 2023, signing a record 164,000 organic rooms globally, including 37,000 rooms from our deal with MGM Resorts International, and our development pipeline reached a new high of roughly 573,000 rooms at year end. During the year, we added nearly 81,300 rooms to our distribution, with one in four organic rooms from conversions. The power of our unparalleled Marriott Bonvoy loyalty program continues to increase, with 196 million members at year end. We’ve continued to leverage our global portfolio and have expanded our co-brand credit card offerings, with 31 cards now across 11 countries. In 2023, global card spend increased a remarkable 11 percent over the prior year. In 2024, we expect another year of solid growth and significant shareholder returns. With normalizing RevPAR growth around the world, we anticipate a worldwide full year RevPAR increase of 3 to 5 percent and net rooms growth of 5.5 to 6 percent. We expect this should yield adjusted EBITDA of approximately $4.9 billion to $5.0 billion for the year and enable us to return $4.1 billion to $4.3 billion to shareholders after factoring in $500 million to purchase the Sheraton Grand Chicago.”