Mark S. Hoplamazian
Analyst · Joe Greff representing JPMorgan
Thank you, Atish, and good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us. We received a number of questions. Thank you for the engagement and the participation. And we look forward to turning to those in just a moment. I want to cover a few topics before we cover the questions. First, first quarter results. 2012 is really off to a good start. I think when you look at North American group in transient revenue, growing in high single digits and the group booking in the first quarter -- bookings in the quarter -- for the quarter and in the quarter for the year, we're quite encouraged by the level of demand that we see. We had recently renovated hotels that are performing well. We've got great feedback from guests and meeting planners alike. Occupancy lift has been significant year-over-year, and we're looking forward to -- for the rate growth later in this year. And finally, as of the first quarter, the hotels that we acquired from LodgeWorks are doing well. RevPAR progression has been very strong. RevPAR index expansion has been very strong, and we've really seen the positive results of the Hyatt brand and the Gold Passport customer penetration into those hotels. Second, we announced yesterday the acquisition of a hotel in Mexico City. We're very excited about this. This will be Hyatt Regency in Mexico City. We're very excited about establishing our presence there, especially in this location. And we have been looking at building our brand presence there for some time. The level of travel to Mexico has been quite strong both in leisure, as well as business travel. And overall, the economic trajectory in Latin America is quite positive. We are very happy with the acquisition. The all-in costs, including an approximately $40 million renovation, will bring us an adjusted over $300,000 per key, which we believe is well below replacement cost. Most importantly, it's really consistent with our strategy of how we intend to use our balance sheet, which is to really secure opportunities in gateway cities. And eventually, this hotel, we will look to recycle it and sell it, but retain a long-term management contract. But we really believe that the repositioning of the hotel, the branding of it and some other work that we're going to do will have a positive impact. Third, I want to talk briefly about the organizational changes that we announced yesterday. We've covered quite a lot of ground over the last few years and established a great foundation for our future. We built a lot of capabilities and added a lot of resources over the last several years. As we look forward, we recognize that our business mix will shift over time as we open hotels in our pipeline. We also recognize that the velocity of the changes in consumer behavior is increasing. There's a large increase of consumers and business travelers in places like China and India. And that will change the profile of our customer base over time. And the key principle that we are really following in the realignment that we announced are, first, higher effectiveness of the organization through better alignment; and secondly, to be more adaptive. We believe that we can increase our effectiveness and our performance over time by being a more adaptive company. Some of the targets that we addressed in the realignment include better aligning operations and development in our operating regions; pushing more decision-making to the regions and to the hotels themselves; to better ensure that we can rapidly implement innovations in each region; and to unify what we're doing in appropriate ways, that is to behave as one company, ensuring consistency across the globe, but also allowing the local flavor of each region to be reflected in our operations. A quick comment on personnel changes. We have announced a number of different moves and changes. We -- by way of reminder, our 2 principal drivers of earnings growth are improvements in our existing operations in our existing hotels, and secondly, expanding our presence through additional hotels under the Hyatt brand. And a lot of what we are doing, is really leading towards the application of operations experience and a focus on ensuring that we are pushing as hard as we can to maximize our performance in our existing hotels. And at the same time, creating better alignment so that we can do more and do it faster with respect to growth of the Hyatt-branded properties. Finally, a quick note on our outlook. The industry dynamics are generally very good. In the U.S., supply is obviously still at a relatively low level. And as we look around the world, global travel continues to grow. We're seeing a lot more intra-country and intra-regional travel in places like China and India. And that is having an impact on how we've gone to market and how we think about driving preference in those markets. Our goals have not changed no matter that we are realigning the organization. Our goals remain to be the most preferred brand in each segments that we serve. And we think about doing that by being able to be focused on what our customers' needs are in each market. We continue to focus on developing our people and see higher levels of engagement over time. And our brand awareness continues to grow. And moves like establishing a presence in a gateway city like Mexico City clearly promote that. Our business model continues to work well. We've had growth. If you look at our pipeline progression over time, it's been significant in the recent past of 15% growth year-over-year. And if you look at the way in which we've actually grown and pursued expansion, we've been using all of the tools available to us, including some transactions that involve using our capital base, but also management and franchising. And it's been quite effective. So we believe that with our capital base, with our focus and with our new realignment that we are extremely well positioned as we look forward to improving conditions. And with that, I'll turn it over to Atish.