Hotel giant Marriott International saw its net profit in the final quarter of 2023 rise by 26 per cent year-on-year to $848 million – helped by “particular strength” in Europe and improving demand from large corporates.
The US-based company said that worldwide revpar (revenue per available room) was up by 7 per cent year-on-year in the fourth quarter, including a 17 per cent rise for its international properties (outside the US and Canada) where Europe and Asia Pacific both performed strongly.
Anthony Capuano, Marriott’s president and CEO, added: “Business transient revenue at our hotels grew 3 per cent from the year‐ago quarter, with demand from large corporate customers continuing to make gains.”
Capuano said Marriott’s team had “delivered excellent results in 2023, as demand for our industry-leading portfolio of properties and offerings around the world continued to grow”.
For the whole of 2023, Marriott increased net profit by 31 per cent to $3.1 billion compared with a profit of $2.4 billion during the previous year. Total revenue was up by 14 per cent year-on-year to $23.7 billion last year.
“In 2024, we expect another year of solid growth and significant shareholder returns,” added Capuano. “With normalising revpar growth around the world, we anticipate a worldwide full-year revpar increase of 3 to 5 per cent and net rooms growth of 5.5 to 6 per cent.”
In Europe, Marriott’s properties recorded an average daily rate (ADR) of $195.71 during the fourth quarter of 2023, which was a 4.1 per cent rise on the final three months of 2022. Occupancy also improved by 3.3 percentage points year-on-year to reach 68.4 per cent in Q4.
Figures for 2023 show that Marriott achieved an ADR of $207.86 in Europe, which was a rise of 7.2 per cent compared with 2022. Occupancy at European hotels also rose by 8.3 percentage points to 68.7 per cent in 2023 compared with the previous year.
Marriott said it added 558 hotels and 81,000 rooms to its worldwide portfolio last year, including 17,500 rooms from its City Express acquisition. Conversely, 63 properties accounting for more than 9,000 rooms exited the company’s platform. This left Marriott with a total of 8,800 hotels and 1.6 million rooms on its system at the end of 2023.
In terms of development, Marriott has a pipeline of just under 3,400 new hotels which will add a total of 573,000 rooms.