MD&A
Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk
Financial Statements
Notes to Financial Statements
Shareholder Return Performance Graph
Quarterly Financial Data
Selected Historical Financial Data
Non-GAAP Financial Measure Reconciliation
Management’s Reports
Reports of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm
Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.
BUSINESS AND OVERVIEW
Under numerous brand names in 73 countries and territories, we are a worldwide operator, franchisor, and licensor of hotels, corporate housing properties, and timeshare properties. We also develop, operate, and market residential properties and provide services to home/condominium owner associations. At year-end 2011, our system was comprised of 3,718 properties (643,196 rooms). The figures in the preceding sentence include 32 home and condominium products (3,838 units) for which we manage the related owners’ associations. In addition, we provided 2,166 furnished corporate housing rental units, which are not included in the totals. At year-end 2011, our operations are grouped into four business segments: North American Full-Service Lodging, North American Limited-Service Lodging, International Lodging, and Luxury Lodging.
On November 21, 2011 (“the spin-off date”), we completed a spin-off of our timeshare operations and timeshare development business through a special tax-free dividend to our shareholders of all of the issued and outstanding common stock of our wholly owned subsidiary Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (“MVW”). In connection with the spin-off, we entered into several agreements with MVW, and, in some cases, certain of its subsidiaries, that govern our post-spin-off relationship with MVW, including a Separation and Distribution Agreement and two License Agreements for the use of Marriott and Ritz-Carlton marks and intellectual property. Under license agreements with us, MVW is both the exclusive developer and operator of timeshare, fractional, and related products under the Marriott brand and the exclusive developer of fractional and related products under The Ritz-Carlton brand. We receive license fees under these license agreements.
Because of our significant continuing involvement in MVW future operations (by virtue of the license and other agreements between us and MVW), our former Timeshare segment’s historical financial results prior to the spin-off date will continue to be included in our historical financial results as a component of continuing operations. Please see Footnote No. 17, “Spin-off,” of the Notes to our Financial Statements and “Part I, Item 1A – Risk Factors; Other Risks” for additional information.
We earn base, incentive, and franchise fees based upon the terms of our management and franchise agreements. We earn revenues from the limited number of hotels we own or lease. We also earn fees from credit card endorsements, the sale of branded residential real estate, and licensing the Marriott timeshare and fractional and Ritz-Carlton fractional brands to MVW. Prior to the spin-off of our Timeshare business, we also generated revenues from the following sources: (1) selling timeshare interval, fractional ownership, and residential properties; (2) operating the resorts and residential properties; (3) financing customer purchases of timesharing intervals; and (4) rentals, all of which we included in our Timeshare segment.
We sell residential real estate either in conjunction with luxury hotel development or on a stand-alone basis under The Ritz-Carlton brand (The Ritz-Carlton Residences). Residences are typically constructed and sold by third-party developers with limited amounts, if any, of our capital at risk. While the worldwide residential market is very large, the luxurious nature of our residential properties, the quality and exclusivity associated with our brands, and the hospitality services that we provide, all serve to make our residential properties distinctive.
Lodging
Conditions for our lodging business improved in 2011 reflecting generally low supply growth, a more favorable economic climate in most developed markets around the world, albeit at a generally low growth rate, and stronger economic growth in emerging markets, strong unit growth, and the impact of operating efficiencies across our company. While economic growth in Europe slowed in the later part of 2011 and the level of economic growth is uncertain in the United States, we remain focused on doing the things that we do well; that is, selling rooms, taking care of our guests, and making sure we control our costs. In 2011, as compared to 2010, worldwide average daily rates increased 3.4 percent on a constant dollar basis to $133.26 for comparable systemwide properties, with RevPAR increasing 6.4 percent to $92.69 and occupancy increasing 2.0 percentage points to 69.6 percent.
For properties in North America in 2011, markets in the West reflected strong demand, while properties in the East and South reflected more moderate demand. In Washington, D.C., a shorter Congressional calendar and government spending concerns reduced lodging demand. For properties in China and Brazil, demand was particularly strong during 2011, while for properties in Europe, demand was more moderate reflecting the financial crisis and related economic concerns. Demand at properties in the Middle East remained weak reflecting continued unrest in that region, and demand outside of the more metropolitan regions in Britain remained weak as a result of government austerity measures. While demand in Japan was weak in the first quarter of 2011 reflecting the impact of the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, domestic demand began to improve in the 2011 second quarter and continued throughout the rest of 2011, but remained below 2010 levels.
We monitor market conditions continuously and carefully price our rooms daily to meet individual hotel demand levels. We modify the mix of our business to increase revenue as demand changes. Demand for higher rated rooms improved in 2010 and that improvement continued in 2011, which allowed us to reduce discounting and special offers for transient business. This mix improvement benefited average daily rates.
The hotels in our system serve both transient and group customers. Overall, business transient and leisure transient demand was strong in 2011, while group demand continues to improve. Group customers typically book rooms and meeting space with significant lead times, sometimes several years in advance of guest arrival. Typically, two-thirds of group business is booked prior to the year of arrival and one-third is booked in the year of arrival. During an economic recovery, group pricing tends to lag transient pricing due to the significant lead times for group bookings. Group business booked in earlier periods at lower rates continues to roll off, and with improving group demand, is being replaced with bookings reflecting generally higher rates.
Negotiated corporate business (“special corporate business”) represented 14 percent of our full-service hotel room nights for 2011 in North America. We typically negotiate and fix room rates associated with special corporate business in advance of the year to which they apply, which limits our ability to raise these rates quickly. For 2012, we expect to complete negotiations with our special corporate business clients in the first quarter, and we expect rates to be higher than the prior year. In negotiating pricing for this segment of business, we do not focus strictly on volume, but instead carefully evaluate the relationship with our customers, including for example, stay patterns (day of week and season), locations of stays, non-room spend, and aggregate spend.
Properties in our system continue to maintain very tight cost controls. Where appropriate for market conditions, we have maintained many of our 2009 property-level cost saving initiatives regarding menus and restaurant hours, room amenities, cross-training personnel, and utilizing personnel at multiple properties where feasible. We also control above-property costs, which we allocate to hotels, by remaining focused on systems, processing, and support areas. In addition, we continue to require (where legally permitted) or encourage employees to use their vacation time accrued during the year.
Our brands remain strong as a result of superior customer service with an emphasis on guest and associate satisfaction, the worldwide presence and quality of our brands, our Marriott Rewards and The Ritz-Carlton Rewards loyalty programs, a multichannel central reservations system, and desirable property amenities. We, along with owners and franchisees, continue to invest in our brands by means of new, refreshed, and reinvented properties, new room and public space designs, and enhanced amenities and technology offerings. We also remove hotels from our system that no longer meet our standards. We continue to enhance the appeal of our proprietary, information-rich, and easy-to-use website, Marriott.com, through functionality and service improvements, and we expect to continue capturing an increasing proportion of property-level reservations via this cost-efficient channel.
We completed the roll out of our sales deployment strategy in 2011, which aligns our sales efforts around customer needs, reducing duplication of sales efforts, and enabling coverage for a larger number of accounts. We now have the systems, training, and incentives for sales associates to sell our represented hotels as a portfolio rather than solely on a hotel-by-hotel basis. Our largest properties continue to have sales staff assigned on property. In 2011, we also implemented innovative technology solutions, including our Retail Pricing Optimizer tool (“RPO”) and our High Performance Pricing tool (“HPP”). RPO determines optimal transient retail (benchmark) rates for hotels using an analytically-driven and market-based methodology. We believe this technology provides a competitive advantage in pricing decisions, increases efficiency in analysis and decision making, and produces increased property level revenue for transient retail and associated segments. HPP enables hotels to more effectively manage the rate set up and modification processes using web-based functionality. The streamlined process provides for greater pricing flexibility, reduces time spent on rate program creation and maintenance, and increases the speed to market of new products and services.
Our lodging business model involves managing and franchising hotels, rather than owning them. At year-end 2011, we operated 44 percent of the hotel rooms in our worldwide system under management agreements, our franchisees operated 53 percent under franchise agreements, we owned or leased 2 percent, and 1 percent were operated or franchised through unconsolidated joint ventures. Our emphasis on long-term management contracts and franchising tends to provide more stable earnings in periods of economic softness, while the addition of new hotels to our system generates growth, typically with little or no investment by the company. This strategy has allowed substantial growth while reducing financial leverage and risk in a cyclical industry. In addition, we believe we increase our financial flexibility by reducing our capital investments and adopting a strategy of recycling the investments that we make.
We consider RevPAR, which we calculate by dividing room sales for comparable properties by room nights available to guests for the period, to be a meaningful indicator of our performance because it measures the period-over-period change in room revenues for comparable properties. RevPAR may not be comparable to similarly titled measures, such as revenues. References to RevPAR throughout this report are in constant dollars, unless otherwise noted. Constant dollar statistics are calculated by applying exchange rates for the current period to the prior comparable period.
Company-operated house profit margin is the ratio of property-level gross operating profit (also known as house profit) to total property-level revenue. We consider house profit margin to be a meaningful indicator of our performance because this ratio measures our overall ability as the operator to produce property-level profits by generating sales and controlling the operating expenses over which we have the most direct control. House profit includes room, food and beverage, and other revenue and the related expenses including payroll and benefits expenses, as well as repairs and maintenance, utility, general and administrative, and sales and marketing expenses. House profit does not include the impact of management fees, furniture, fixtures and equipment replacement reserves, insurance, taxes, or other fixed expenses.
Timeshare
As noted previously, on November 21, 2011, we completed a spin-off of our timeshare operations and timeshare development business through a special tax-free dividend to our shareholders of all of the issued and outstanding common stock of our wholly owned subsidiary MVW.
In preparing our former Timeshare segment to operate as an independent, publicly traded company following the spin-off of the stock of MVW management assessed the Timeshare segment’s intended use of excess undeveloped land and built inventory and the current market conditions for those assets. On September 8, 2011, management approved a plan for our former Timeshare segment to accelerate cash flow through the monetization of certain excess undeveloped land and excess built luxury inventory. As a result, we recorded a pre-tax non-cash impairment charge of $324 million ($234 million after-tax) in our 2011 Income Statement under the “Timeshare strategy-impairment charges” caption. We discuss these charges in more detail under the caption “Timeshare Strategy-Impairment Charges” later in this Management’s Discussion and Analysis section. Also see the “Timeshare” caption later in this Management’s Discussion and Analysis section, for additional information on the results of operations.