February and March were the key moments in the first quarter when Wyndham Hotels & Resorts CEO Geoff Ballotti noticed real hotel demand coming back.
"We saw it specifically in states like Texas," he said on the company's first-quarter earnings call with analysts, noting that Texas, Florida and California combined account for a quarter of the company's U.S. room count.
"We saw it across the Midwest, infrastructure states collectively," he said. "We saw non-government infrastructure [demand] pick up."
That type of infrastructure-related demand in the U.S. has been a key component of Wyndham's hotel performance goals in recent quarters. And Ballotti said it became evident in the first quarter that demand was picking up.
He specifically cited hotels in U.S. oil and gas market tracts, which make up 12% of the company's room count, gaining 400 basis points of revenue per available room growth in the quarter.
"Our blue collar and infrastructure business is strengthening," he said. "Government [business] is showing signs of improvement, and there's a lot of optimism out there with oil and gas in those markets we're in," he said.
And while Ballotti said the company is optimistic about peak summer leisure travel in the coming months, he's noting general positives influencing leisure travel.
"Booking lead times are really solid and the lengths of stay are getting longer," he said. "We're seeing guests drive further than last year, and drive a lot further than they did post-COVID."
Pipeline and room count
Wyndham closed the first quarter with 869,300 rooms open globally, with the majority — 510,000 — in the United States. That reflects 4% growth year over year in the first quarter, a record for the company, Ballotti said.
In the U.S., rooms at the midscale level and above (281,600) outnumber economy rooms (219,100).
The company continues to focus growth on hotels that fall in the midscale and above segments. Seventy percent of the company's global development pipeline sits in that space.
The global development pipeline grew 3% year over year to a record of more than 259,000 rooms and 2,200 hotels. The majority of the pipeline — 77% — is new-build hotels, and 57% of the pipeline sits outside the U.S.
Performance and outlook
Record pipeline growth, 21% ancillary revenue growth and internal AI infrastructure implementation were highlights of the quarter, Ballotti acknowledged.
And while absolute revenue per available room growth was flat, Ballotti was optimistic about what he called "faster-than-expected RevPAR recovery for our U.S. select-service brands."
Overall, global RevPAR fell 1% in the first quarter compared to the first quarter of 2025, driven by a 1% drop internationally and flat numbers in the U.S.
The company shifted its 2026 RevPAR growth outlook slightly up, to a range of 1% loss to 1% gain, compared to its prior range that projected 1.5% loss to 0.5% gain.
As of press time, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts stock was trading at a price of $81.38 per share, down 4.6% year over year. The NYSE Composite Index was up 21.17% for the same period.