IN AN EXCLUSIVE interview with Asian Hospitality, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts President and CEO Geoff Ballotti called for unity among associations advocating for the hospitality industry. He also said he’s seeing many reasons for optimism despite some economic uncertainty.
Ballotti was attending the 2026 AAHOA Convention & Trade Show in Philadelphia on April 8 when he stopped to talk with the magazine. He brought Wyndham’s franchise sales development, marketing, operations and technology teams with him to the show, where they’d noticed the excitement in the air.
“I think people are feeling much better about where we are today than where we were this time last year, where there was a lot more uncertainty,” Ballotti said. “At AAHOACON 2025 we were all in New Orleans and this was a period where you saw in the industry, you saw RevPAR start to really soften and you continue to see that in the select service space.”
AAHOA is important to Wyndam, he said. Its role was a topic of the discussion for many at the conference.
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Staying united
The upcoming celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary emphasizes the importance of taking a bipartisan approach to solving the issues facing hospitality, Ballotti said.
Ballotti said 37 years ago, Wyndham’s chairman at the time, Henry Silverman, and then chief financial officer Stephen Holmes, who is Wyndham’s current chairman decided that there was a need for advocacy among small business owners in the select service, economy and midscale lodging space. The company wrote a check for $100,000 that launched AAHOA in its offices in Atlanta.
“Associations like AAHOA and the American Hotel and Lodging Association are really important,” Ballotti said. “Advocacy matters. What matters most to congressmen and women is that they're hearing not from brands and suppliers who are here, but they're hearing directly from the small business owners.”
The future looks bright
The state of the nation’s economy is improving, Ballotti said, though there was cause for concern a few month’s ago.
“Here we are now in April, and we've seen three consecutive months where demand in our industry has picked up,” he said. “I think franchisee small business owners that are here at AAHOA for this conference are feeling a lot more optimistic about the business ahead than they did this time last year.”
Wyndham’s stock was on the rise going into AAHOACON26, up 3.5 percent April 8 after President Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran, according to Yahoo Finance. Ballotti confirmed the increase but said stocks were up in general. Not long ago, he said, the company was trading at more than $110 a share.
“You look at our long-term growth algorithm and economy and midscale lodging, RevPAR has been down now for four consecutive quarters,” Ballotti said.
In its recent earnings call, Wyndham reported its RevPAR globally declined 1 percent in constant currency, reflecting flat U.S. performance and a 1 percent decline internationally. U.S. RevPAR was flat overall, with underlying improvement in occupancy and ADR after excluding prior-year hurricane impacts.
Still, Ballotti said RevPAR is coming back overall, stabilizing in January and starting to pick up in February and March. That’s a factor contributing to the optimism he’s seeing.
“From an investor standpoint, and I think that's being reflected equally in the stock,” he said. “Certainly, uncertainty creates questions for investors, but what investors want to see is RevPAR stabilization, which they began to see towards the end of the year, and RevPAR growth in the economy, in the select service space, which they've begun seeing in the past few weeks.”
Continued demand stabilization and improvement are behind the rising RevPAR, Ballotti said. He said, according to STR, RevPAR during the previous four weeks was better than the last eight weeks.
“Those are the first green shoots that investors have seen in this, in this select service economy landscape, from a demand standpoint,” Ballotti said. “It's been really encouraging to see.”
With the U.S. hosting FIFA World Cup games and semiquincentennial America 250 celebrations, he said there's much to be optimistic about this summer. He also isn’t seeing the warning signs investors worry about.
“Are we seeing a tick up in cancelation rates? We're not. Are we seeing people still with gas beginning to tick up, willing to drive? We are. Are we seeing average lengths of stay shorten? We're not,” he said. “And most importantly, are we seeing booking windows shorten, meaning we don't have a lot of visibility, given the short-term nature of our leisure, transient business, and we're not.”
