Hilton hit both an important loyalty milestone and a growth record in the third quarter — further signs the hotel giant is increasingly a formidable competitor against its rival and the world’s largest hotel company, Marriott International.
The Hilton Honors loyalty program now has more than 200 million members, a symbolic growth feat as industry analysts increasingly wonder if the program might eventually overtake Marriott Bonvoy — which had more than 210 million members at the half-year mark. Marriott’s earnings call comes early next month, so that figure is certain to rise with new third-quarter figures.
But Hilton is growing in more ways than loyalty members. The hotel company also reported net growth of 33,600 hotel rooms in the third quarter — a record-setting pace of nearly 8% room growth since the same time last year. Hilton opened more hotel rooms in the last three months than in any other quarter in company history.
“We continue to have more rooms under construction than any other hotel company, accounting for more than 20% of industry share and nearly four times our existing share of supply,” Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta said during an earnings call Wednesday morning.
It’s clear some of Hilton’s newer brands are driving a hefty amount of growth — especially Spark, the company’s premium economy brand that has largely grown via deals where owners of existing hotels renovate and convert those properties into Spark’s brand standards.
Just announced early last year, Spark already has more than 6,000 rooms across the entire brand network. More than 20 Spark hotels opened in the last quarter, and Hilton is expanding the brand to Germany and Austria on top of its existing presence in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada.
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“The brand’s pipeline is three times larger than its existing supply, and we expect continued launches in international markets to further boost Spark’s trajectory, positioning us well for future growth in the premium economy space,” Nassetta said.
While Hilton is often seen as a bigger player in mainstream and middle-market brands than Marriott, Nassetta appeared to swipe at that critique on this week’s earnings call. He boasted that with the addition of nearly 400 hotels to Hilton’s network thanks to the new Small Luxury Hotels of the World partnership, Hilton has one of the largest luxury hotel portfolios in the industry.
Basically, there’s increasingly a Hilton for all wallet types these days.
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