Hoplamazian says agentic booking via LLM platforms is still tiny but will grow fast and become a significant part of distribution.

the actual bookings that are being completed that originate through LLM platforms is very, very small. So we are still early, early in the days of agentic -- direct agentic booking. It's coming, and it will grow fast.

Hoplamazian says AI has cut turnaround for conversion property improvement plans from weeks to a day, helping speed conversions.

the utilization of AI to facilitate and accelerate how we approach property improvement plans for conversions. The turnaround time has been reduced from several weeks to a day.

Hoplamazian argues lower fees at upper mid-scale hotels are not a concern since pipeline fees per key are accretive and the strategy fills gaps where members already travel.

It is, by definition, true that when you have a hotel that's got a leading rate of $100 as opposed to $200, your total fee base and the room size is much smaller, the fee base is going to be lower. So that's just math. It is not an -- it is not an acute issue right now

Hoplamazian highlights corporate group demand as the strongest growth driver, with 2027 pace up almost 10%.

if you look at the component pieces of group, by far, the largest growth is coming from corporates. And if we look into what corporate looks like for the full year this year, it looks like it could be up in the range of 7% or thereabouts. And if you look into next year, corporate pace is up almost 10%.

Hoplamazian notes heavy key money competition in development deals but Hyatt prefers innovative, less key-money-intensive support and expects $150-170 million annually.

there's a lot of key money flying around development deals these days. I think the intensity of it varies by type of project or chain scale.