Q1 2026 Public Travel Earnings: Beat the Print, Brace for Q2

Marriott expects Q2 Middle East RevPAR to be down ~50% year-over-year. Every public lodging company beat Q1. Eleven of fourteen brands and REITs raised full-year guidance.

Stephen Grambling's thesis from last week's episode played out almost perfectly: easier comps + muted guides = beats coming. But the Q1 print and the H2 narrative are now leaning on two assumptions that have to hold — that the Middle East stabilizes by Q3, and that the World Cup actually shows up.

Three editorial reads woven in below:

1. Hilton is making the most contrarian call in the sector. Nassetta openly named it a "C-shaped economy" — convergence, not divergence — citing tax refunds, the Big Beautiful Bill, deregulation, and AI-driven investment as drivers. I'm skeptical. One quarter of select-service snap-back doesn't unwind a decade of K-shape, and most of his cited drivers are one-time or front-loaded. Grambling's call will hold up. The Motley Fool

2. Marriott is now the lone World Cup hold-out. Either disciplined (Bonvoy is the official supporter with properties in all 16 host cities — they have proprietary pickup data) or stubborn. Given AHLA's May 4 survey says 80% of host-city hoteliers are tracking below projections, my base case is stubborn.

3. Marketplaces are pulling away from brands again. Airbnb grew revenue at ~4x the rate Hyatt grew RevPAR. Booking did $53.8B in gross bookings in one quarter — roughly 9x Marriott's annual gross fees. 

Marketplaces (BKNG / EXPE / ABNB) Continue to DOMINATE

All three beat. All three are now baking ~100 bps of Middle East drag into Q2.

• Booking (BKNG): Revenue +16% to $5.5B. Gross bookings $53.8B (+15%). Room nights +6% to 338M. Adj EBITDA +19%. Q2 guide implies sharp decel: room nights +2-4%, revenue +4-6%. Stock dropped after-hours despite the beat.

• Expedia (EXPE): Revenue +15% to $3.4B. Adj EBITDA +83% to $542M — highest Q1 margin in 15 years. Adj EPS $1.96 vs. $1.39 expected = 41% beat. B2B is the engine: gross bookings +22%, revenue +25%.

• Airbnb (ABNB): Revenue +18% to $2.7B. GBV +19% to $29.2B. Nights +9% to 156M (would have been 10% ex-war). Raised FY revenue growth to low-to-mid teens; ≥35% adj EBITDA margin. First-time bookers grew at the highest rate since 2022, led by Brazil, Japan, India.

Brands - Solid but Not the Growth of the OTAs

f there's any sign of weakness in terms of the high-end customer, we have not seen it

Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt CEO Hotel Dive

My read: Hyatt is the cleanest beat in the brands. Luxury is doing exactly what Grambling said it would, and the geographic diversification (China re-accelerating, APAC ex-China at +11%) is paying off. Wyndham deserves credit for crushing its own guide — but the absolute number is still negative globally. Choice's full-year reaffirmation in the face of a 410 bps hurricane drag is actually a quiet bullish signal if you believe Pacious's "inflection point" call on conversions. The strangest number in the table: Marriott's select-service swing from -1% Q4 to +3.5% Q1 — that's a 450 bps quarter-over-quarter delta. Either Nassetta's C-shape is real or Q4 was the aberration. Q2 will tell us.

Lodging Public REITs

Every public lodging REIT raised guidance. 

We haven't seen RevPAR and total RevPAR growth at these levels since the third quarter of 2014

Jon Bortz, Pebblebrook CEO AOL

My read: The REITs tell the more interesting story relative to the C-corps. When you own the asset and RevPAR outperforms, you capture the operating leverage — Pebblebrook's 327 bps of margin expansion and Sunstone's 28.6% AFFO growth are what that looks like in practice. Three caveats: (1) Sunstone and Pebblebrook had unique comp benefits (Andaz ramp, LA fire recovery, San Francisco AI inflow) — don't extrapolate. (2) Park's full-year RevPAR guide of 0.5-2.5% is the lowest in the room; that's a real outlier when everyone else is at 3%+ — worth a closer look at their urban concentration. (3) Brand stocks underperformed the S&P in Q1 despite the same beats. Either the market is pricing the Middle East drag harder on the brands than on the REITs, or it believes the asset-light story is finally mispriced.

The World Cup Reality Check

Marriott vs. everyone else. Pick a side.

• The hold-out: Capuano: "Despite what you're hearing and reading in the press, we continue to feel confident in our 30 to 35 basis point impact globally from World Cup. We did extensive research before we guided that number." Host's raised guidance also leans on World Cup as part of the "special events" tailwind. Yahoo FinanceStocktitan

• The data on the ground: CoStar / Tourism Economics cut expected FY US RevPAR contribution to 0.4%, down from 0.6% in February. AHLA's May 4 survey: 80% of host-city hoteliers say bookings tracking below projections; FIFA block cancellations, international travel barriers, and rising costs are the cited drivers. Hotel ManagementEuronews

• The benchmark: 1994 US World Cup drove ~11.9% June/July RevPAR lift in host cities; 2026 currently projected at 1.7%. CRE Daily

• The ground truth: Some host-city game-day occupancy reportedly as low as 15%. CRE Daily

My read: Marriott has proprietary booking data the rest of us don't see, but every third-party data set is moving the number down, and FIFA itself is releasing blocked rooms back to market. My take is that World Cup 2026 WILL UNDERPERFORM.

I’ll be at NYU on June 1 & 2 and Ryan Meliker joins the show as the first repeat guest next week. ….Stay tuned for Our Takes on Q2 & Beyond.