Wyndham Vaults Back to Full Recovery on Leisure Travel and Essential Workers
Photo Credit: A concentration on affordable brands like La Quinta buoyed Wyndham back to pre-pandemic performance by the end of 2021. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts
Skift Take
Affordable hotels and a focus on resilient, on-the-road business travel segments like infrastructure accounts throttled Wyndham back to pre-pandemic performance levels. Maintaining focus on its strengths sets it apart from direct competitor Choice Hotels.
Wyndham Hotels’ heavy focus on economy and mid-priced hotels that cater to leisure travelers and essential workers vaulted the company back to pre-pandemic performance levels last year. The company reported its global revenue per available room — the industry’s key performance metric — fully recovered to 2019 levels in the fourth quarter and was at 97 percent of 2019 levels for all of 2021.
While the U.S. drove a bulk of this recovery, it was still able to achieve this global figure in light of more travel restrictions abroad.
“(Last year) once again demonstrated the strength of our brands, the resiliency of the leisure traveler, and the benefits of the select-service economy and midscale segments,” Wyndham CEO Geoff Ballotti said on an investor call Wednesday. “Many of our franchisees reported the best year they've ever experienced since owning their hotel.”
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