Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (Hilton) today announced its Q2 2019 results. Nick Wyatt, Head of Tourism at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the company’s announcement:

“Hilton’s Q2 results are very impressive, topping Wall Street profit estimates and continuing on from a strong first quarter.

“The above-expectation performance has been driven by strong demand for rooms, particularly in North America, and this has driven improved revenue per available room (RevPAR) as it has allowed Hilton to increase both average daily rate (ADR) and occupancy rates.

“RevPAR is a great indicator of pricing power and the fact that system-wide ADR grew 0.9% in the first six months of the year without adversely affecting occupancy rates shows that Hilton’s brand equity and service offering allow it to move pricing in its favor. Hilton has been investing greatly in industry-leading guest facing technologies and the Connected Room concept to serve as a differentiator, and this seems to be paying dividends.

“In fact, system wide occupancy grew 0.6% compared to H1 2018, meaning that Hilton has been able to raise prices while improving occupancy rates. Attracting more customers while getting them to pay more is a recipe for success and Hilton has delivered on its promise of sustaining the success it saw in the first three months of the year.

“The company has had to reduce RevPAR projections somewhat, now forecasting an increase of 1%-2%, rather than the original guide of 1%-3%, and its H1 performance is very much in line with this projection, which must be stressed, is still very positive.

“With such a strong performance and a development pipeline of almost 2,500 hotels with approximately 373,000 rooms, Hilton is primed for further growth.”