Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE:WH) reported second-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company's second-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts reported a record opening of nearly 18,000 rooms in Q2 2026, marking a 7% increase from the previous year, and expanded its development pipeline to approximately 261,000 rooms.
U.S. RevPAR grew by 2%, outperforming expectations, while international RevPAR declined 6% due to weakness in the Middle East and Revo insolvency issues.
Adjusted EBITDA and EPS each increased by 3% on a comparable basis, and the company generated approximately $169 million in free cash flow year to date.
Wyndham continues to focus on technology innovations, including the international rollout of Wyndham Connect, an AI-enabled guest engagement platform, and the reimagined Wyndham Rewards credit card portfolio.
The company raised its global RevPAR outlook to flat to +1%, reflecting stronger-than-expected U.S. performance, while maintaining a net room growth outlook of 4% to 4.5% excluding Revo.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Welcome to the Wyndham Hotels & Resorts second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press zero.
I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Capuzzi, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis and Investor Relations.
Matt Capuzzi, SVP, Financial Planning & Analysis and Investor Relations
Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Geoff Ballotti, our CEO, and Amit Sripathi, our CFO. Before we get started, I want to remind you that our remarks today will contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risk factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risk factors are discussed in detail in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and any subsequent reports filed with the SEC.
We will also be referring to a number of non-GAAP measures. Corresponding GAAP measures and a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to GAAP metrics are provided in our earnings release and our investor presentation, which are available on our investor relations website at investor.wyndhamhotels.com. We are providing certain measures discussing future impact on a non-GAAP basis only because, without unreasonable efforts, we are unable to provide the comparable GAAP metric.
In addition, last evening we posted an investor presentation containing supplemental information on our investor relations website. We may continue to provide supplemental information on our website and on our social media channels in the future. Accordingly, we encourage investors to monitor our website and our social media channels in addition to our press releases, filings submitted with the SEC, and any public conference calls or webcasts. With that, I will turn the call over to Geoff.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I'd like to start off by thanking those of you on the call who have reached out to me to wish me well during my treatment for multiple myeloma. I'm getting great care, I'm staying busy with work, and I'm very optimistic about the treatment path ahead, and I can't tell you how much your words of encouragement have meant to me, so thank you for that. We're very pleased to report another strong quarter where we opened a record of nearly 18,000 rooms, 7% more rooms than we opened last year.
We drove sequential net room growth both domestically and internationally, and we expanded our development pipeline to a record of approximately 261,000 rooms with a fee-par premium approximately 30% higher than our existing domestic and international systems. U.S. RevPAR grew 2%, 120 basis points ahead of our expectations, and on a comparable basis we grew adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS each by 3%. Year to date, our resilient, highly cash-generative business has produced approximately $169 million of free cash flow, and we've returned over $170 million to our shareholders.
While global RevPAR remained flat sequentially at down 1% in constant currency, domestic RevPAR improved by over 200 basis points to up 2% ahead of our 1% growth expectation. The 1% April month-to-date RevPAR growth that we reported on our last earnings call continued to pick up throughout the remainder of April, with momentum accelerating from May into June. Domestic RevPAR saw increases in both demand, up 60 basis points, and ADR, up 160 basis points, and our three largest states—Texas, California, and Florida—which account for one-quarter of our U.S. room count, improved by 700 basis points sequentially from down 3% in Q1 to up 4% in Q2. Weekend RevPAR improved sequentially, supported by stronger results in drive-to markets. The strength we saw in the industrial Midwest in Q1 continued into Q2 with RevPAR outperformance in states such as Illinois and Indiana, both up 10%, Iowa up 9%, Wisconsin up 7%, and Ohio up 6%. This momentum reflects the continued benefit of infrastructure-related demand, which is helping boost midweek occupancy and providing a meaningful source of long-term growth for our franchisees.
So many of our hotels located in project-adjacent markets are serving some of America's largest transportation, AI, data center, and industrial projects now ramping across the country. Strong leisure and everyday business travel trends continued into July. Where, excluding the impacts from the World Cup and America 250, month-to-date RevPAR growth has been relatively consistent with June's performance. International RevPAR declined 6% in constant currency during the second quarter.
Canada increased 2%, while EMEA declined 6% as strong growth in Turkey and India was more than offset by softness in the Middle East, where RevPAR declined from down 5% in Q1 to down 45% in Q2, and in Germany, where the REVO portfolio continued to underperform as it progressed through insolvency. Latin America RevPAR declined 7%, pressured by lower U.S. inbound travel to Mexico. Excluding Mexico, the region was flat. In Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, RevPAR grew 5% led by Vietnam, Thailand, and New Zealand, and while industry China RevPAR experienced a 400-basis-point sequential decline, our RevPAR in China remained flat sequentially, though down 5% compared to the second quarter of 2025. On the development front, Wyndham's owner-first value proposition continued to drive strong openings and net room growth. We opened nearly 18,000 rooms, up 7% year over year and a second-quarter record for our company. Our development pipeline grew for the 24th consecutive quarter to a record of approximately 261,000 rooms across over 60 countries, with a fee-par premium of approximately 30% both domestically and internationally, reflecting our strategy of adding hotels in higher chain scales and in geographies and markets with stronger long-term economics.
Here in the United States, we drove sequential growth in the second quarter with strong conversion additions in higher chain scales like the Wyndham Jacksonville Hotel and Conference Center, with its multiple restaurants, bars, and 35,000 square feet of meeting space, along with the Winfield Lofts, a Wyndham hotel located in Los Angeles near Dodger Stadium and the L.A. Coliseum. New construction openings this quarter domestically were also strong, with additions like the La Quinta Hawthorn Suites Mubin, North Carolina, the Hotel Troy, a Trademark by Wyndham located less than three miles from our New Jersey headquarters, and The Monarch, an HQ hotel on historic St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, the latest addition to our growing Registry Collection. EMEA grew net rooms by 10% excluding REVO, with several outstanding conversions including the Wyndham Porto Colomb Resort in Mallorca, Spain, and the Wyndham Grande Carvuíru, nestled on the cliffs overlooking Portugal's breathtaking Algarve Coast, our third upper-upscale addition to this important European vacation destination. Latin America and the Caribbean grew net rooms by 12%, winning with several fantastic conversions like the Wyndham Macaé on the sands of Picado Beach in Rio de Janeiro and new construction openings like the Wyndham Garden Durango in Mexico. In Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, we grew net rooms by 10% driven by exceptional new construction openings like the Vienna House by Wyndham Charm Long Hai in Ho Chi Minh, marking our first Vienna House hotel in Vietnam, and in China we once again delivered double-digit net room growth for our direct franchising system and 13% net room growth across all of mainland China, with a record-breaking performance for our Days Inn brand, which, after adding eight spectacular direct franchise hotels in the first quarter, opened another 19 Days hotels in the second, including so many upscale new-construction direct franchise agreements like the Days Hotel by Wyndham Bortola Jingha, our 150th Days now open in China. Ancillary revenues increased 4% in the quarter and 12% year to date, aided by our exciting new suite of Wyndham Rewards credit card products, our continued expansion of strategic partnership initiatives, and our ongoing technology innovations. Wyndham Connect, our AI-enabled guest engagement platform powered by our Wyndham-trained LLM, is now being rolled out internationally.
With more than 5,000 hotels today installed, the platform improves guest service while helping engaged franchisees generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in incremental revenue by autonomously selling services, upgrades, and amenities that guests want to take advantage of. Wyndham Connect Plus, a premium add-on to the platform and recently renamed Wyndham AI Concierge, is also expanding now internationally, and it's driving more than 500 basis points of increased direct contribution for these hotels through agentic voice channels by managing franchisees' direct-to-hotel voice and messaging contacts and, again, autonomously booking reservations while lowering their hotel operating costs. Last month, in partnership with Barclays, we reimagined our Wyndham Rewards credit card portfolio, reshaping how members can earn, redeem, and engage with our award-winning loyalty program. This refreshed credit card lineup is creating sustained long-term ancillary fee growth and includes four distinct products, each designed to target a specific type of member and demographic. The portfolio now spans no-fee, premium, business, and elite offerings, including our Earner Premier card, our first ultra-premium co-branded credit card.
Wyndham Rewards' new Earner Premier is receiving great reviews as a powerhouse card offering some serious benefits for members, including up to 120,000 bonus points as a welcome offer, automatic Diamond status with its complimentary suite upgrades, late checkout, an extra 20% bonus points on stays, a 25% discount on award redemptions, and no points expiration ever. Together, these enhancements made across all four of our refreshed cards expand our appeal to higher-value travelers while strengthening Wyndham Rewards' differentiated value proposition through richer benefits and greater everyday value.
Earlier this week, we were extremely proud to be recognized for the tremendous value that we provide to our guests through Wyndham Rewards, where we once again were named the number one hotel rewards program by U.S. News & World Report. Our Wyndham Rewards team remains focused on initiatives to drive increased loyalty and engagement, with the program now contributing more than one out of every two check-ins domestically. Global membership enrollments grew another 9% year over year to a membership base of over 126 million members.
With so many new upscale, so many new luxury, and new all-inclusive aspirational hotels being added to the system, along with our desire to maintain the simple fixed redemption structure that makes Wyndham Rewards so very unique, we're expanding the program from three to four award tiers for free night stays in September. Free nights will now start as low as 5,000 points versus 7,500 points previously. While a select number of our most aspirational hotels will move from 30,000 points to a new tier of 45,000 points. Wyndham Rewards' simple fixed redemption structure with no dynamic pricing, which means no increased points requirements based on seasonality or peak periods of demand, remains unchanged, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to delivering the industry's most rewarding and the simplest loyalty program for both members and for franchisees.
Looking ahead, we're encouraged by the continued recovery in both leisure travel and everyday business travel demand. As U.S. Select Service RevPAR strengthens, we are well positioned to benefit from that momentum. Most importantly, we thank our team members around the world for their commitment and their relentless focus on serving our franchisees and our guests, which remain the foundation of our success. And with that, Amit will now walk us through our financial highlights and full-year outlook.
Amit Sripathi, EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Geoff, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin my remarks today with a detailed review of our second quarter financial performance followed by an update on our cash flows, our balance sheet, and our outlook. Before I begin, let me remind everyone that the comparability of our financial results continues to be impacted by the timing of our Marketing Fund spend. In the second quarter of this year, Marketing Fund revenues exceeded expenses by $14 million in line with our expectations, while revenues exceeded expenses by $3 million in the second quarter of last year.
To enhance transparency and provide a better understanding of the results of our ongoing operations, I'll be highlighting our results on a comparable basis which neutralizes the Marketing Fund impact. In the second quarter we generated $375 million of net revenues and $212 million of adjusted EBITDA. Net revenues declined 6% year over year, primarily due to the absence of pass-through revenues from our May 2025 global franchisee conference, lower other franchise fees, and the deferral of fees from REVO, partially offset by higher ancillary revenues, EBITDA-neutral revenue from the two REVO hotels we've taken possession of, and a larger global system on a year-to-date basis. Ancillary revenues grew 12% driven by higher credit card and partnership fees. We continue to expect full-year ancillary revenue growth of low to mid-teens, which implies slightly accelerated growth in the back half of the year. Adjusted EBITDA increased 3% on a comparable basis, primarily reflecting lower G&A expenses driven largely by insurance recoveries, the timing of variable costs, and higher ancillary revenues, partially offset by a decline in other franchise fees and the deferral of fees from REVO.
Our full-year expectations for G&A expense remain unchanged as the Q2 favorability will be largely reversed in the back half of the year. Adjusted diluted EPS for the quarter was $1.48, a 3% increase on a comparable basis, reflecting growth in adjusted EBITDA and the benefit of share repurchase activity partially offset by increased interest expense. Free cash flow was $105 million in the second quarter and $169 million year to date. Development advance spend totaled $28 million in the second quarter.
We continue to see strong and growing demand for our brands with global openings and pipeline up 4% year over year excluding REVO. Historically, the hotels with development advances have entered our system at a fee-par premium of approximately 40% relative to our system average. We returned $86 million to our shareholders in the second quarter through $54 million of share repurchases and $32 million of common stock dividends. Year to date, we've now repurchased 1.3 million shares of our stock for $105 million.
We ended the quarter with approximately $1 billion in total liquidity and our net leverage ratio of 3.5x remained as expected at the midpoint of our target range. At this leverage ratio, our current outlook implies up to $170 million of capital available for share repurchases or M&A in the back half of this year, after factoring in dividends and the remaining portion of the $110 million we've allocated for development advances. Now turning to outlook.
As Geoff mentioned, second quarter U.S. RevPAR growth exceeded our expectations by a full point at plus 2%. As such, we've updated our outlook to include our second quarter U.S. RevPAR outperformance and our revised assumptions for U.S. RevPAR growth in the back half of the year, increasing from flat to up 2%. Our revised outlook also reflects the most recent trends in China and the Middle East as well as REVO properties in Europe. Accordingly, we're raising our global RevPAR outlook to flat to plus 1%, an increase of 100 basis points at the low end of our range.
There are no changes to our net room growth outlook of 4% to 4.5% excluding REVO. The REVO insolvency process is nearing conclusion and we expect to retain a subset of the REVO-related rooms. As you would expect, we've remained disciplined from a capital perspective as it relates to further investments in the REVO portfolio and as a result the majority of the portfolio is expected to terminate during the third and fourth quarter of this year. As a reminder, our outlook excluded any financial impact from REVO as we deferred all revenues.
We plan to enter into franchise agreements with the new operators for the subset of REVO rooms we expect to retain, and we'll revisit the deferral of revenue for these hotels and any financial upside to our full-year results at that time. Net revenues are now expected to be $1.48 billion to $1.5 billion, increasing the bottom end of the range by $10 million. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be $735 million to $745 million, raising the bottom end of the range by $5 million.
From a cadence perspective, we expect the majority of the remaining year-over-year comparable adjusted EBITDA growth to occur during the fourth quarter, primarily due to the lapping of one-time variable cost reductions made during the third quarter of 2025. Our expectation for the Marketing Fund to break even on a full-year basis remains unchanged. With respect to seasonality, the Marketing Funds underspent by $5 million in the first half of the year and we expect the funds to overspend by approximately the same amount in the second half, with the amount roughly consistent between the third and fourth quarters.
Adjusted net income is projected to be $355 million to $365 million and adjusted diluted EPS is projected at $4.71 to $4.83, which is based on a diluted share count of 75.4 million shares and, as usual, does not assume future share repurchase activity or incremental interest expense from any potential new borrowings. There are no changes to our outlook for development advance spend or free cash flow conversion. In closing, our second quarter results demonstrate the continued strength of our asset-light business model, further inflection in U.S. Select Service RevPAR trends, and the consistency of our cash flow generation. We delivered comparable growth in adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS, maintained strong liquidity and disciplined leverage, and continued to return excess capital to shareholders while investing selectively in high-return development opportunities. With our raised outlook reflecting stronger-than-expected U.S. RevPAR performance and continued confidence in our long-term growth drivers, we remain well positioned to deliver solid results in the second half of this year while creating sustainable value for our shareholders.
With that, Geoff and I would be happy to answer your questions. Operator.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. At this time, if you have a question or comment, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. We ask that you limit yourself to one question. And our first question today comes from David Katz with Jefferies. Your line is now open.
David Katz, Analyst at Jefferies
Morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question, Geoff. Glad to hear all is progressing well. I wanted to just start this morning and get your perspective on U.S. consumer health, you know, clearly figuring out what the U.S. RevPAR growth trajectory is going to look like. You know, this year it's been surprisingly good. Help us get some insight on how sustainable that is and, you know, we'd certainly love your longer-term view to that end too.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Thanks. Well, thank you, David. And we do believe it is sustainable when we look at our middle-income consumers who, despite the affordability issues and not being happy about gas prices, they're in relatively good shape. And I think we all feel good about and very optimistic about the second half and the year ahead for several reasons. Obviously everyone's talking about our comps which will continue to ease throughout the year. 2Q economy comp, of course, was down 4. 3Q, just to remind everybody, it was down 5, and 4Q in economy was down 8. All of the leading indicators that we look at domestically are strong. Our cancellation rates continue to improve. Our booking lead times are holding steady at about 15 days. The average distance driven for these consumers to our resorts this summer, at 360 miles, was actually up 30 miles from the first quarter, and consistent with last year, despite the gas prices. And the length of time they're spending at the hotels—the average length of stays that these families are staying to vacation this summer, and we think into the fall—is continuing to lengthen.
We're also optimistic about the second half tax refunds for these consumers. We think it will unlock further discretionary spending. About 10% of the $60 billion of tax refunds will be spent on travel; U.S. Travel is estimating. And middle-income guests are going to be spending—our consumers are going to be spending—70% of that, meaning an extra $4 billion that will be spent domestically this year on travel. And when we look at how they're doing financially, their wage growth is robust enough certainly to support increased leisure spending, which we're seeing and the banks are seeing.
I mean even the third of the lower-income households this week, on the banks that reported, were seeing wage and deposit growth catching up to the higher-income households. And on top of all of that leisure demand for the rest of the year, the infrastructure business for us continues to improve on really strong private sector growth, with a 300 basis point Q2 increase in government spending. Oil and gas markets outperformed by 350 basis points in Market Tracks for us, representing about 11% of our rooms.
And all of this has boosted weekday RevPAR by about 250 basis points from Q1. So there's a lot out there to be confident about and our teams are feeling it.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And our next question comes from Brandt Montour with Barclays. Your line is now open.
Brandt Montour, Analyst at Barclays
Great. Thanks for the question and great to hear your voice, Geoff. Can you help us maybe for a minute—can you help us better understand the revenue to EBITDA bridge in the second half? Maybe perhaps starting with royalty and franchise fee growth? You know, that line didn't grow in the second quarter in line with U.S. RevPAR growth. So just what kind of visibility or confidence do you have that that return to U.S. RevPAR growth in the back half will drive sort of accelerating growth in those other core revenue lines?
Amit Sripathi, EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Hey Brent, good morning and thanks for the question. I'll start with the math first and then go into the drivers' breakdown. I think if you take our full-year EBITDA at the midpoint of $740 million and you take the comparable adjusted EBITDA in the first half of $363 million, it would imply a back-half EBITDA of about $377 million, or about $14 million higher than the first half. And this is assuming the marketing funds breakeven, which is our expectation for the full year.
And that's just the math. As I noted in the prepared remarks, the majority of the growth is going to be in the fourth quarter. Now if you go into the drivers, we're expecting second-half U.S. RevPAR growth of 2%. We're also expecting international RevPAR to improve compared to the front half. And then we also expect growth in the franchise fees in the second half. As I mentioned on last quarter's call, that and Revo were two of the big drivers for the second quarter royalty and franchise fees year-over-year variance that you had referenced.
So we do expect core revenue lines to grow alongside RevPAR, and then ancillary. We did about 12% in the first half. Our full-year expectation is low to mid-teens, which would imply an acceleration in the back half. And then lastly, the G&A favorability that we saw in the second quarter is largely timing related and we expect that to reverse in the third quarter. So those are the puts and takes for the back-half revenue and EBITDA growth to get to the midpoint of $740 million.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Belisario with Baird. Your line is now open.
Michael Belisario, Analyst at Baird
Thanks. Good morning everyone. Jeff, glad to hear everything is going well with your treatment and that you're staying so positive. Want to ask on unit growth: deletions did tick up a bit in the first half of the year. That's ex Revo. Ex-TNL, to help us understand how much of that is you being more proactive, how much of that is competition? And then just sort of looking ahead, what are you seeing, what are you hearing that gives you confidence that unit growth will accelerate in the back half?
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Yeah, thanks, Mike. First half we always expect to have higher deletions and lower openings, while the second half we generally experience lower deletions and higher openings. And as you point out, we were certainly pressured domestically in the first quarter with the outsized loss of the legacy TNL from their resort optimization initiatives and the Vacasa rooms, a legacy Wyndham Worldwide relationship we had, which we previewed on the fourth quarter call, and absolutely pressured as well in the first half with outsized terminations from Revo.
You know, we look at retention on a rolling 12-month basis. We have made steady progress over the years moving it from the 94s to where we are at 95% globally at the end of the second quarter. Domestically, while our economy brands lead the industry from a retention standpoint, our long-term goal remains. Our teams are committed to moving that retention to 96% both domestically and internationally, which is where we are internationally, running it at 95.9% over the last 12 months.
To your question, in terms of the levers to get there, we are, to your point, very focused on replacing those lower-quality, lower fee-per-room rooms with higher-quality and higher fee-per-room rooms in accretive markets that reflect the record franchisee owner satisfaction that we're seeing, the record guest satisfaction that we're seeing. I mean we've seen our strongest year-over-year gains since going public across all of our quality and all of our guest satisfaction metrics, whether it's our net promoter scores or our overall satisfaction scores — they're all at record highs.
And our economy brands, which we're very focused on right now, are seeing some of the highest net promoter score growth that they've ever seen. Microtel, which was J.D. Power's economy winner this year, up 500 basis points. Super 8 up. Days Inn up. So a Q2 OSAT, with that focus, of almost 500 basis points, a net promoter score about the same. And our index comparing how our economy overall satisfaction review scores comp against our peers is now running over a fair share, and we'll continue to focus on that.
To the last part of your question, in terms of what we're seeing with new select-service brands coming in — we get this question a lot — we have seen less than 1% of our system who we either termed or who left us reflagging to one of these new brands that are being introduced. They're not materially impacting our signings or our openings or our pipeline or our approach on key money, which is tracking in line with the past few years on a year-to-date basis.
We had a record year domestically of openings last year. Q1 was a record of domestic openings. Q2 is another, and we've opened 8% more rooms domestically year to date. So we're not seeing that as a threat or an issue. And, again, the reflagging of less than 1% of our former hotels of ours to new brand competitors we don't view as material to our development growth moving forward.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steve Pizzella with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
Steve Pizzella, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
Hey, good morning everyone and thank you for the question. Jeff, glad to hear everything is progressing well. Just wanted to ask on how we should think about the longer-term EBITDA algorithm here. Given some of the one-time items this year, can you help us think about the pieces to get back to the mid- to high-single-digit EBITDA growth moving forward?
Amit Sripathi, EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Hey, good morning, Steve. Thanks for the question. Our long-term algo remains consistent with what we've communicated previously: high single-digits EBITDA growth predicated upon 2% to 3% RevPAR growth. And we have, as you noted, some one-time items with Revo and variable comp this year that — obviously when you adjust for that — we're trending towards that again. As we get RevPAR growth, we feel very confident. The 2% to 3% that we're seeing in our algo, you're kind of seeing that in the back half of the year — we saw that in Q2 — so we feel confident that RevPAR will catch up.
And then net rooms growth — 4% to 5% is our long-term algo and we've been delivering at the 4%. To get to the 5%, some of that is retention-related, as Geoff said, as we continue to deliver record openings. And then on the other items that we do control — ancillary revenues — we have low to mid-teens for this year; long term that's high single digits. And then, you know, royalty rate of 5 basis points domestically and internationally — we continue to do that.
You look at the last two years, we're actually pacing ahead of that. So we continue to deliver on everything that's within our control, and RevPAR is progressing well. So I think we're on track for the long-term EBITDA algorithm.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And our next question comes from Patrick Scholes with Truist Securities. Your line is open.
Patrick Scholes, Analyst at Truist Securities
Great. Good morning, Jeff. Very encouraging to hear you're getting great care and certainly like to hear your optimism here. Let's talk just quickly about what's happening with you folks in Europe. Specifically, how did Europe perform for you along the impact of Revo, and what are your expectations for at least the upcoming and following quarter specifically on Europe? Thank you.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Sure, I'll start and then Amit could jump in. As we talked about, Patrick, international RevPAR was weighed down by Europe and by Latin America and the Caribbean. But I'll start with Europe. Our EMEA RevPAR, which declined 6%, was certainly affected by a 45% drop in the Middle East and, as we pointed out in our script, a soft Revo performance throughout its insolvency — which again, Revo we've backed out of all of our revenues. But excluding the Middle East and Revo, our performance in EMEA was up 5%.
We saw strength this summer and continue to see it in Spain, which was up in the quarter 26% — it's been a really strong market for us. Turkey was up 16%, India was up 11%, and Africa was up 11% as well. And then when we look at Latin America — something else that obviously weighed on our international RevPAR driver — it slowed from down 4% in Q1 to down 7%, and that was driven by continued softness in Mexico. But excluding Mexico, Latin America was flat.
And the good news and the optimism for us looking forward: we're seeing Mexico pick up. July is now running at +5 month to date, driven largely by rate, which is great and positive for franchisees and for our margins. But moving forward, I think we're obviously cautious — it's a fluid situation in the Middle East. But again, the Middle East is less than 1% of our system.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question today comes from Danny Assad with Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Danny Assad, Analyst at Bank of America
Good morning, Jeff and Amit. Jeff, glad to hear that you're getting great care and we're all rooting for you.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Thank you, Danny.
Danny Assad, Analyst at Bank of America
If I could just ask a little bit on your outlook. So if we're taking domestic RevPAR from flat to up 2%, how does that 200 basis point raise split between rate and occupancy, and does that mix differ from what we've seen so far? And can you just help frame that for us in terms of how much more occupancy is there to grow from here on out?
Amit Sripathi, EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Hey, good morning, Danny. Thanks for the question. I'll start with your first part, which is domestic RevPAR. We're obviously pleased to see Q2 come in 120 basis points ahead of expectation, and we're really expecting that to carry into the back half of the year, taking our outlook from flat to plus 2%. As far as the breakdown between OCC and ADR, we are assuming about two-thirds rate driven and about a third OCC, and that's really consistent with what we saw in the second quarter.
Rate was about 160 basis points and then OCC was about 60 basis points. And then as we look ahead, in terms of your overall question as to OCC and how much room there is: OCC's been about 90% of 2019 levels. Most of the RevPAR growth has been driven by ADR, as you know, and that's consistent with the industry and consistent within the segment. So there's probably about 10% more tailwind that remains on OCC. We were encouraged to see both OCC and ADR increase in the second quarter, and we're expecting that to continue into the third and fourth quarter.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Chaikin with Mizuho. Your line is now open.
Ben Chaikin, Analyst at Mizuho
Hey Jeff, thinking about you and wishing you strength. I want to double click on the NUG topic again. So you opened roughly 7,000 — you opened up roughly 7,000 net rooms in 1H, need to open roughly 30,000 net rooms in 2H, and I know you talked about the idea that you always expected to have kind of higher deletions in 1H and lower deletions in 2H and openings. Kind of the opposite of that is the idea that you've been actively pruning — just to double click here — is the idea that you've been actively pruning hotels and this activity will slow as it's under your control, and that's kind of been the entire plan for the whole year.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
In terms of the levers that we talked about, you know, absolutely. I mean again, we're really focused on replacing those lower-quality, lower fee-per-room rooms with those higher-quality, higher fee-per-room rooms, which we're seeing in accretive markets. And again, certainly reflected and continues to be with our OSAT and our NPS in our economy brands. We're feeling, Ben, really good about our domestic trajectory. I mean, again, our record year of domestic openings last year, Q1, a record Q2, and we've opened and we continue to open and continue to grow that domestic pipeline of more upscale and more accretive rooms at that much higher fee-per-room along with a pipeline which is domestically at an all-time high of 110,000 rooms. And you know, again, feeling good about the second half.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Brignall with Rothschild. Your line is now open.
Alex Brignall, Analyst at Rothschild
Thank you very much for taking the question. And Jeff, as with everyone, wishing you the best. So on the loyalty program, again, clearly you have a spectacularly popular program with both owners and guests. Some news from one of your peers during the quarter suggested that in terms of the balance of economics between franchise owners and property owners have maybe gone a little too far. Could you just talk a little bit about the economics of your program and how you are balancing some of the benefits that you're providing with some of the AI programs you're doing, increased direct distribution with, where that ends up in terms of economics flowing through to you, the franchisor, and to the franchisees. Thank you so much.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Sure. Thanks. Our owners, when it comes to the Wyndham Rewards program, are very engaged and have never been more so. You know, we run our loyalty program from an economic standpoint on a break-even basis through our marketing funds, which our franchisees, our owners, and our Franchise Advisory Committees (FACs) understand. I mean it's something when we meet with our FACs—and been meeting with them this month on Zoom—they understand that and they're very engaged with both Wyndham Rewards and with the credit card program that's helping drive more direct business to their hotels.
You know, our program from an ownership standpoint, an economic standpoint, is not only viewed by them as the simplest and the most rewarding for members and guests, which, I mean, we could not be more pleased. And a shout-out to our Wyndham Rewards team for yesterday's Today Show big reveal that Wyndham Rewards took the number one spot again on U.S. News & World Report as the best hotel rewards program based on really six criteria that we think really makes our program stand out as the most rewarding and the simplest.
But back to the owners. You know, it's viewed as the most equitable program in the industry when it comes to redemption rates. And that's what owners are focused on. Wyndham Rewards pays back to our owners for free night stays on an occupancy basis—redemption—versus a fixed dollar amount. So they'll take that inbound. I mean, during high-demand periods, our franchisees are very happy to take a free night stay direct booking as they're not having to absorb any program cost given the high demand and occupancy, and they're getting their full average daily rate.
So we're very engaged with our owners on the program and obviously members are more engaged, and our owners understand today as it continues to grow—and we grew it, as we said in our script, by another 2.5 million members in the second quarter. It's domestically providing in the economy space, which has been, I think until our program, unheard of—one out of every two check-ins domestically. And it's a really powerful tool for them that they're very engaged on.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Pulitzer with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Dan Pulitzer, Analyst at JPMorgan
Hey, good morning, everyone. And Jeff, glad to hear that you're feeling well and in good spirits.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Thanks, Dan.
Dan Pulitzer, Analyst at JPMorgan
I wanted to talk about the outlook a little bit. You know, you raised RevPAR, I think 50 basis points at the midpoint. You raised EBITDA a few million. As you sit here today and think about your net rooms growth outlook and RevPAR across both domestic and international segments, it's where do you feel the greatest confidence in underwriting to get to that high end of the range? Yeah, that's it. Thanks.
Amit Sripathi, EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Hey, Dan, good morning. You know, look, our guidance is a range, so obviously it incorporates a lot of possibilities and we have, you know, multiple combinations of driver growth to hit our outlook range. But specifically to your question about where do we feel the greatest confidence: we obviously saw U.S. RevPAR growth accelerate throughout the year and we've seen it outpace our expectations, and international came in a little bit weaker in the second quarter, which we do expect to recover in the back half of the year.
So you will see some better performance on a relative basis. So U.S. RevPAR growth, I think as you look at the back half, what we're forecasted at, plus 2%. Obviously that's kind of what we're seeing based on, as Jeff alluded to at the beginning, what we're seeing on a normalized basis in July as well as June. And so is there potential for acceleration? You know, we're all optimistic that remains to be the case. So you can see if that happens, obviously the high end will really go through U.S. RevPAR, but also we do need some recovery in the international as I mentioned, and that really kind of flows into our EBITDA drivers. We took the point and a half of RevPAR growth we saw in the low end into our EBITDA and raised it by $5 million. The high end, as I said, kind of remains unchanged. So the midpoint movement is really just math.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Grambling with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Steven Grambling, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Hey, thanks, Jeff. Great to hear your voice. I'll echo my well wishes and hope you're back on the VersaClimber soon if not already. Your slide deck notes key money is only three out of every ten deals, and I think you used to say that Michelle had an eyedropper. Now Mitt is in the seat and had development lens, and I think we've talked about this previously, but can you remind us of the guardrails you think about in terms of deploying key money? And are you seeing any change in the opportunity set or even the return potential from key-money-related deals?
Amit Sripathi, EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Hey Stephen, good morning. We are—in terms of whether it's Michelle or me—one thing that hasn't changed is we are both extremely disciplined when it comes to our shareholders' capital and we'll continue to do so. So that hasn't really—if you look at 2024, 2025, and our outlook for 2026, we've really been in the $100 to $110 million range. So it hasn't really changed. And as we kind of talked about in the prepared remarks, when we do give development advances they come in at a significant RevPAR premium over the existing system, roughly 40%.
So when we use it, it's really we're targeting assets and markets—attractive markets—where we want to increase our presence, higher RevPAR assets to kind of bolster overall fee-per-room. And then in terms of our underwriting and how we are—you know, it obviously goes without saying we're disciplined. And the discipline really comes in in the form of making sure that the expected returns are well above our cost of capital. We also factor in regional differences to make sure that we are getting the appropriate risk-adjusted return.
And then the opportunity set—listen, I think we have seen, as the earlier question about competition, we've certainly seen more competition over the last three years, but I think it's a testament to the strength of our brands and our value proposition that our key money has remained in that same range of $100 to $110 million.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And our next question comes from Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.
Ian Zaffino, Analyst at Oppenheimer
Thank you very much. And, and Jeff, glad we got some good news here. Keep it up. You know, as far as the World Cup, would you be able to maybe quantify the impact there, maybe on U.S. RevPAR—whether second quarter, third quarter—you know, what's kind of baked in and how do we think about it? Thanks.
Amit Sripathi, EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Hey Ian, good morning. We obviously, you know, we were—I think the World Cup was a great success for the U.S. and we were pleased, and as our president said, hopefully it returns very soon. As far as the impact is, we had about 25 basis points in for the quarter in the U.S., so our overall quarter, the impact—which was again just June in the second quarter—and that's kind of similar expectations for July. The other thing I think I want to make sure we capture is America 250, which we had, definitely helped in both June as well as July.
So those two had roughly—you kind of adjust for those two and you look at what June and July RevPAR are—those are kind of consistent with the 2% that we're guiding for the back half of the year and really just shows the underlying strength of the leisure demand and the weekday everyday business demand above and beyond the one-time items that we saw in June and July related to World Cup and America 250.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Meredith Jensen with HSBC. Your line is now open.
Meredith Jensen, Analyst at HSBC
Thanks. Good morning. I was hoping you could speak a little bit more, given how Wyndham is continuing to be a real leader in driving technology and AI initiatives and clearly showing an ability to move pilot to scale really quickly, if you might talk about which areas you're seeing bigger opportunities than you might have spoken about previously and maybe, on the other side, which parts of the initiatives you might need a reset— you know, sort of evaluating the TAM on some of those.
Thank you.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Sure. Thanks, Meredith. I would—I'll point to three. And while I don't think they need a reset, the first, certainly, is our ongoing work with our LLM relationships, which is so benefiting our guest search, you know, continues to evolve and changes frequently. But I mean we all know that roughly 60% of travel searches by our guests are occurring within an LLM—for whether it's inspiration or research or itinerary building. Our focus remains to serve those guests end to end for the best booking experience and drive increased direct bookings, and our use of an AI-powered on-property LLM along with Wyndham agents in each of those LLMs.
You know, we're really excited about how we're providing real-time rates and inventory and guaranteed room types—things that a cached or a scraped third party just simply can't. We're seeing we're driving increased visibility for our hotels in those listed results. And what we're seeing and what we want to continue to see is a higher conversion. We're seeing a 20% higher conversion on our brand.com sites when the guest connects to us from an LLM.
And it's something that we're continually working on. I wouldn't say reset, but will continue to evolve. What we're most excited about and what we've moved, to your point, from pilots to really meaningful benefit for our franchisees are the products that our franchisees are embracing. Right now, our Wyndham Connect—it's allowing, as we said in the script, now 5,000 of our hotels to directly talk to all of our guests via AI. And just taking labor-intensive tasks away from those franchisees, allowing them to make extra money—it's something we talk to them about every day.
There'll be a note this Thursday—today—going out this afternoon to all of our franchisees once again extolling and promoting the benefits of selling early check-ins and late checkouts and upgrades all autonomously. And again, we've talked about this publicly. It's driving, upwards for engaged franchisees, $100,000 or more in increased revenues. That's a big, big deal right now. And we have exceeded 40 million guest messages to date. We're averaging about 260,000 guest interactions via this AI tool per day.
And again, you know, our franchisees, our FACs have been part of the process from the get-go and are increasingly engaged with it. And then we also talked briefly about our new Wyndham AI concierge product, which is a premium add-on, unlocking all the AI voice capabilities, handling everything that's direct to the hotels over voice, whether it's coming in, if you're calling our hotel, messaging our hotel, or SMSing our hotel. We are booking those reservations for our hotels completely autonomously, leveraging Salesforce and Data360.
I mean, it's live now in 1,500 hotels, using those AI agents. They have just an encyclopedic knowledge and understanding of what Meredith has booked with us before, her loyalty status, and the ability to answer any question imaginable. And for franchisees, again, it's saving them labor—and that's why they're engaged—by not needing as much staffing in their front office. But it's driving up to, and we've talked about this publicly, an increase of 500 basis points of direct contribution by handling all of the franchisees' on-property voice, yielding zero dropped calls and increasing that booking conversion and driving a. We're able to drive a 15% increase in ADR if you're booking it autonomously versus on the phone. And that's a big deal for franchisees. So we're super excited and we'll continue to push on that.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from Trey Bowers with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Nick Weichel, Analyst at Wells Fargo
Hi, this is Nick Weichel on for Trey. We're glad to hear you're doing well, Jeff. Just wanted to dig in a bit more on units growth and, you know, the pruning of the portfolio with the lower fee power to bring in more higher fee power. Are there any specific brands and regions where you're seeing the most—like where you're doing the most pruning? And I guess vice versa, are there any brands and regions where you want to potentially add more rooms to?
Thank you.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Well, yeah, I mean the international opportunity that we have to continue to add brands—I mean, we continue to add new brands and we've done that over 175 times in spin across 100 new countries. So, I mean, the opportunity for our direct franchise sales teams internationally is just enormous and we'll continue to do that. I mean, there's no brands in specific that are, you know, right now in tough shape from a pruning standpoint. We're just very focused on our conversion room openings—again, looking at bringing in higher fee-par deals and higher quality deals—and we're seeing great success.
I mean, we continue to gain meaningful share domestically in the upper midscale conversion market. Domestically, we've doubled it from where we were pre-spin to about 25% today. And we've done that in our upscale—we continue to add upscale brands to our domestic portfolio—and we've taken that share from 4% to 8%. And the brands that are doing very well from a conversion standpoint are brands like AmericInn, like Baymont, like Hawthorn Suites. Their quality scores are all improving. They all saw double-digit growth in domestic openings and La Quinta. La Quinta conversions in Q2 tripled domestically. We've opened a dozen La Quintas year to date and we're really proud of that. And then from where we have lost rooms and have been focused on quality, we're also gaining more than our fair share of economy conversions. Back in 2019, our conversion share was about 44%. It's 63% today. We're still—I mean, we like that business.
Over 90% of all of our conversion executions in the economy space that open are opening less than a year from signing, and our franchise sales teams are increasingly engaged with the brands that we have in terms of how their quality scores are improving. And the new brands like Dazzler, Dazzler Select, which we haven't talked about publicly, that is doing very well for us.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And our final question today comes from Lizzie Dove with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Lizzie Dove, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. And Jeff, really wishing you the best and glad that you're doing well. I think most of my questions have been asked. Just a clarification from me on the modeling side of things. I think you said the majority of EBITDA growth would be in Q4. I know there's been a lot of marketing fund variability. I think it was an $18 million underspend last year in Q3, so about $20 million or so variability in Q3 based on what you've guided in the second half.
And so just curious, in that majority of EBITDA growth in Q4, is that on an underlying basis, kind of ex the marketing fund variability, or on a reported basis?
Amit Sripathi, EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, it's—hey Lizzie, thanks for the question. It's ex the fund. So I was, you know, when earlier in the questions that someone asked about kind of the bridge for the second half, so the numbers I was giving, which is the back half is going to be about $14 million higher than the first half—that's on a comparable basis, which assumes that the marketing fund is neutral on a full-year basis. So we've got—I kind of went through the puts and takes. So the fund delta is largely going to be the $5 million that we're carrying over. I think we said in our prepared remarks is going to be overcome roughly the same between Q3 and Q4. You also have a little bit of the variable cost reductions from Q3 of last year that we're going to be lapping, which obviously increases the—which is why the growth you're going to see on a reported, on a comparable basis, is going to be primarily in the fourth quarter.
Lizzie Dove, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
Thank you.
OPERATOR
This does conclude today's question and answer session. I'll now turn the call back to Jeff Bilotti for closing remarks.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Well, thanks, Angela, and great job. And thanks everyone for your questions and your interest in Wyndham Hotels & Resorts and for your well wishes. I'll say this, I've never had a greater sense of gratitude. Each morning when I wake up and start my day, I am surrounded by an amazing group of leaders and team members who have all delivered another great quarter and set us up for just a great year ahead. And Amit and Matt and I, we look forward to talking to many of you today and in the weeks and months ahead.
And in the meantime, we'd like to remind all of you golf fans that we're less than two weeks away from the 20th Wyndham Championship, the final tournament, the very final tournament of the PGA Tour's regular season before the FedExCup playoffs begin. And coverage begins on August 5th on the Golf Channel and then continues over the weekend with Jim Nantz and the CBS crew. They do a great job. Have a great rest of your summer, everyone, and thanks again for joining us today.
OPERATOR
Thank you. This does conclude today's Wyndham Hotels & Resorts second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.
Geoff Ballotti, President and CEO
Thanks, Angela.
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