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Pebblebrook Hotel Trust (PEB)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 23, 2015

$14.10

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone and welcome to the Pebblebrook Hotel Trust Third Quarter Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Raymond Martz, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Raymond Martz

Management

Thank you, Dana. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter 2015 earnings call and webcast. Joining me today is Jon Bortz, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. But before we start, let me remind everyone that many of the comments we make today are considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are considered subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, as described in our 10-K for 2014 and our other SEC filings, and could cause future results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements that we make today are effective only as of today, October 23, 2015, and we undertake no duty to update them later. You can find our SEC reports and our earnings release, which contains reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures we use on our website at pebblebrookhotels.com. Okay. So we have another good quarter to talk to you about and during the third quarter, our hotel delivered strong bottom line results, which resulted in healthy 22.1% increase in adjusted FFO per share. Let me take you through the detailed results. Same-property RevPAR for the total portfolio increased 4%, to $230. This was in line with our revised outlook which we provided in the first half of September and at the bottom end of the range that we provided with our second quarter earnings release. The more modest RevPAR growth was largely due to the late Labor Day shift to September 7 this year. This negatively affected August as well as the beginning of September, certainly more than has historically been the case in prior years when Labor Day fell this late. September was also negatively impacted by the shipment to September of the Jewish holidays. Despite some of the demand shift in the quarter, our ADR grew…

Jon Bortz

Management

Thanks Ray. So as Ray said, the third quarter was another good quarter for both the lodging industry and for Pebblebrook though not as good as we expected three months ago. When we look at the third quarter's overall industry performance, there are a few trends worth noting. First, industry demand was choppy in the quarter with a number of cross wins particularly holiday movements on a year-over-year basis that negatively impacted performance in August and September. The very late Labor Day on September 7, coupled with the trend over the last few years of school starting earlier in August in many places around the country seems to have had a very negative impact on leisure travel in the last 10 days of August. As a result, August industry-wide demand actually declined for the first time since late 2009 and led to RevPAR growth of only 2.2% in the month, also the lowest monthly performance since 2009. The movement of the Jewish holidays into September also had a negative impact on performance. However, the strong 8% RevPAR growth for the industry is not indicative of the impact in the major cities where corporate businesses are more sensitive to scheduling meetings and travel. So while the industry had strong growth in September, the urban markets were weaker with RevPAR increasing just 4.2% and the luxury and upper upscale chain scale segments increasing just 5.1% and 3.9% respectively. Indicative of the impact of a holiday shift on September's performance, industry-wide Group demand for the month was down over 4.5% with Group occupancy down 3.5% and Group RevPAR actually declining 0.7%, certainly creating a drag on the month and the quarter's performance. As a result of the negative impact from August and September, industry-wide Group occupancy for the quarter declined by 1.7%, leading…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll go first to Rich Hightower with Evercore ISI.

Rich Hightower

Analyst

Hey guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.

Jon Bortz

Management

Sure.

Rich Hightower

Analyst

So I want to talk a little bit about the fourth quarter first. So RevPAR guidance as of the Investor Day was 5% as you mentioned and then we've taken that down to I guess 3.5% at the midpoint. I guess that's not so bad, especially given some of the bigger trends you've talked about, but can you give us a little bit more of a bride in terms of the market and the demand segment that are leading to that 150 basis point reduction there and just a little more detail if you don't mind.

Jon Bortz

Management

Sure. Well, the reduction is spread out through the portfolio because the cancellation trends and the short term pick up trends we've been seeing have been prevalent throughout the portfolio though clearly more dominant in the gateway cities. In terms of the emphasis, I would say we're seeing more of it in a couple of markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles and Boston within the portfolio and probably a little less on a weighted basis in some of the other markets. We've been seeing that for longer in New York, which we've talked about again in previous calls, but we had already changed our strategies and tactics to more significantly overbook than what we had been doing based upon what was a fairly consistent ability to project the cancelations in the New York market, but otherwise it's fairly spread out through the portfolio.

Rich Hightower

Analyst

Okay. That is helpful. And then a question on margins, so I guess for the last couple of quarters and then this would also apply to the fourth quarter looking ahead, it does seem like flow-through has been one of the highlights relative to what's been happening to the topline perhaps. And I know that a lot of the RevPAR gains are coming from rate, which is good for margins. But how long do you think this -- the positive flow-through trends can continue given some of the deceleration in demand and maybe a little bit jitteriness on the pricing side that I think investors are starting to consider at this point?

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes, I think we have a ways to go within the portfolio in terms of productivity enhancements, best practice implementation, improvements in food and beverage and we have quite a number of significant initiatives within the portfolio related to restaurants and reconcepting or leasing them out that are under different phases of being underway, some with lease assigned, some that are already opened, some that we’re in the market leasing right now, some that we’re in the process of reconcepting, and then we continue to have significant savings particularly at the hotels we bought over the last two to three years. And those have offered us kind of a plethora of opportunity to continue to improve margin. So I think we've a ways to go, Rich, and much of it’s already identified and it’s about execution and some things take a little longer to execute in terms of years, some things we can get done in three, six, nine months within the portfolio.

Rich Hightower

Analyst

Okay, thanks. And one last quick follow-up, so on the GM turnover that you mentioned that’s happening, I guess above the average number of properties this year, do you have any idea what margins could have been if it weren’t for some of that extra turnover versus the historical average?

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes, it's really -- it’s less of an impact on margins. It's more of an impact on top line and the Executive Leadership that I was referencing was really three main positions at our hotels through the portfolio, the General Manager, the Director of Sales, or Director of Sales and Marketing, in other words the Head of the Sales Effort, and the Revenue Manager, which might be the most important of the three. And so that’s what’s been about 50% this year and it represents probably almost an impact of at least one leadership position of those three in the portfolio this year at two-thirds of the portfolio. So we know, it’s had an impact on performance. It’s hard to quantify it, but we see it in the share that we're losing at the properties where we've had those changes. And then when we do get new people in, it does take some time for them to ramp up and understand the dynamics of the property that they're now selling or revenue managing or managing.

Rich Hightower

Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks Jon.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Anthony Powell with Barclays Capital.

Anthony Powell

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Just on the cancelation, could you give more detail on which type of customers are canceling? Are you seeing corporate transient customers cancel or leisure or cancellations around groups that will be helpful if you can give more detail there?

Jon Bortz

Management

Sure Anthony. Well, it’s all of the above but the largest change that we've seen in behavior has been around transient cancelations, not group cancelations. And as it relates to the transient cancelations, it's more heavily weighted towards business travel, than it is to leisure travel and I think that we could attribute some of that to the greater sophistication of technology that’s being used by some corporations to monitor rates and take advantage of any reductions. I think we've talked in the past about the concern about these loyalty programs that are causing our revenue managers or revenue managers in the industry at branded properties to lower rates near arrival versus raising rates closer to arrival. And so I think it’s leading to people with multiple reservations to monitor different properties and also no penalty for cancelling a reservation or even changing a reservation if it’s more than 24 hours out right now and with most of the branded policies out there. So that’s where we've been seeing it most. We have seen a little more attrition in some of the conventions in various markets that we have. They've been a little harder to predict this year. Again, we're not sure that it's anything other than people playing these rate opportunity games within the market where sometime the transient rates become more attractive than the group rate that they might have booked under. The other thing that’s worth mentioning is I know that we have, but many of the owners particularly the institutional larger owners out in the industry, have been having a lot of conversations with the major brands about instituting longer cancelation polices meaning you can’t just change your reservation by 6 PM and not suffer a penalty. So hopefully we're going to see those restrictions get pushed out a little bit because it’s really costing the industry. It makes it really hard to manage our business on a short term basis. And I think what we’re going to see ultimately is we're likely to see penalty fees for either cancellation or changes and hopefully that's coming down the pike sometime over the next year.

Anthony Powell

Analyst

All right. Got it, thanks. And second question is on I guess the ramp up of the Zephyr and WLA. You're getting in pricing increases, but I guess the occupancy is falling off a bit further than you expected. What customer segments can you target more that you're not getting right now at those two hotels? Thank you.

Jon Bortz

Management

Sure, well we're -- it’s interesting, in the case of Zephyr it’s actually a fairly dramatic change in the customer segment from what it was doing as of Radisson, primarily because we’re pricing $50 higher on average than we were previously. So it’s not necessarily about changing the segmentation per se as much as it is about changing the customer. And since we're providing a product that has much more value to the customer, we want to charge the customer more and that generally means you have to find new customers. So that takes time. It's as if it’s a new hotel and so it really is about all of the segments. It’s about increasing the wholesale business, getting new customers there at higher rate. We get much, much higher rates for the wholesale business at the Argonaut down the street. And so again, if the business is out there we need to get it and we got to get the customers to the property to see the property though they're willing to pay the price that we're asking. We do expect to actually expand our corporate base there which was fairly nonexistent previously based upon the humanity base of the hotel and then it's really again on the transient side about getting exposure to the property, the people who are willing to pay more to be down at Fisherman’s Wharf and the trip advisor reviews and the Yelp reviews are all extremely helpful in getting us that exposure that we need to get customers willing to pay more than what they were willing to pay when it was at Radisson.

Anthony Powell

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Jon Bortz

Management

At WLA that’s a little different, because in many cases it is a customer segment modification. We need to bring in more group, which wasn’t coming to the property before because of its condition and so we think that business again is out there. We have other properties in the market and we have to get those people to the property, get them to experience it and then book it. So part of it is group. A lot of it will be rooms only group. So that may be entertainment. That may be international travel, longer term stays. It will include the business that comes out of the consulting and accounting firms that is project business, which again is more repeat weekly longer stay business. And then we need to drive some additional corporate accounts into the property, particularly in order to pick up the 39 additional rooms that we've added, which is about 15% of the inventory.

Anthony Powell

Analyst

Thanks for the detailed answer.

Jon Bortz

Management

Sure.

Raymond Martz

Management

Thanks Anthony.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Shaun Kelley with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Shaun Kelley

Analyst

Hey guys can you hear me?

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes.

Shaun Kelley

Analyst

Great, good morning, Jon, Good morning Ray. So in the prepared remarks you guys mentioned a little bit about possibly leaving some RevPAR on the table as you remixed more towards rate and away from occupancy. And so I was just curious if you could provide little bit more color on that given -- the occupancies in your markets are so high already and San Francisco and New York and a lot of places you guided previously from the CBD in which you guys operate. It feels like you should be able push more rate than perhaps you're getting and my guess is you would probably agree with that. So I am curious why do you think -- why do you think elasticity is maybe a little different, are you not able to get quite the rate boost that you would expect at this point in the cycle? And Jon in your kind of longer term or historical perspective is there another period in the past where you've seen similar behavior and any perspective you could provide on that?

Jon Bortz

Management

Sure. So that's a good question and actually it's a very complicated -- it's a more complicated answer because it's so much about and particularly where we're doing it strategically repositioning properties is I was kind of talking about was Zephyr. It's more about changing the customer than it is about just increasing prices with existing customers. So it's something that takes time and unfortunately we're running customers off the property if you will more quickly than we're getting new customers to the property, but we're getting the rate increases in many cases that we're looking for. We're just not getting enough of it yet to offset the occupancy loss or looked at the other way, we're also losing too much occupancy meaning we didn't get enough new customers into the property to make up for the occupancy that we lost by driving away customers that wouldn't be willing to pay that higher rate and there is nothing new about that. People have their own price range and they're going to shop properties in the market that provide that price range even if in many cases it means going downhill from a quality perspective. So I do think it's just a time issue primarily within our portfolio. Some of it is execution Shaun and it's harder to execute when you don't have the key leaders at some of the properties. So that will tend to stretch out for the time period it takes to gain that share and reposition the properties and we know we're losing share. We get that date both obviously on our competitive sets and in the markets that we're at and by and large, our markets aren’t losing occupancy, we are. And again it's more about the time it takes to get new customers than it…

Shaun Kelley

Analyst

Thanks for the candor on that. It's really helpful. And my second question would be just a little bit on -- you gave some helpful outlooks for different markets for next year and I wanted to ask a little bit about supply in some of your markets for next year. So just any sense you could give us on which markets you're expecting to see some of the biggest supply increases in the CBD next year versus some of the markets where you think that's going to be the most benign or perhaps likely the most bullish for your portfolio?

Jon Bortz

Management

Sure. So we mentioned this at our Investor Day. There is a few markets where we're going to see 3% to 4% supply growth next year. They would include Portland. They would include Nashville. Interesting -- Nashville is a good example. It's running in record occupancy. I think supply is up around 7% this year. Demand is up about the same and the market is up in the low teens on a RevPAR basis. So clearly just having more supply is not the only dynamic to look at in a market, but we would always no supply is better than supply being added into the market. San Diego we should see 3% to 3.5%. Boston 4% to 4.5%. West LA 3% to 4%. DC around 4%, Miami 4% to 5% and New York we should continue to see around 4% in the market. And then markets like San Francisco 1% to 2%, Buckhead under 1%, Seattle between 1% and 2%, Philly between 1% and 2%, Minneapolis around 1%. So in many cases that’s up from this year and the one thing I think is worth mentioning and trying to understand is one of the reasons you don’t see occupancy growth in the stronger markets is because there isn’t more occupancy to be had in those markets. And if they're running at 84%, 85%, 86% and they're seasonal, there just isn’t more occupancy to be gained. It's going to go somewhere else either to another city or it's going to the suburbs or it will go to the airport and we saw that in markets like even New York for the first three years of very substantial supply growth. We had pretty good ADR growth and strong RevPAR growth during that period. So it isn’t just about supply. The economy is really important in terms of what is the underlying demand that’s being created in a market like Seattle, it’s well more than the 1% to 2% demand growth that it's showing for this year, but it can't be accommodated in the city right now. And so certainly in the first year or two as we add some supply in some of these markets it's not really going to have an impact on the ability to continue to drive rate in those markets because the occupancy is going to get pretty easily absorbed.

Shaun Kelley

Analyst

Got it. Thank you very much Jon. Appreciate it.

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Ian Weissman with Credit Suisse.

Ian Weissman

Analyst

Good morning. Just follow-up on that supply question, Jon you've always been pretty candid about supply at least up until now being a tailwinds for your earliest industry fundamentals. As you kind of think about the challenges across several of your markets LA, San Francisco in particular, the one thing that nobody has mentioned on this call and I am just curious about your views is how much of has Airbnb just taken the wind out of the sales of your ability to push rate?

Jon Bortz

Management

We've talked about this in our prior calls Ian and it’s no different. We wouldn't say anything has changed in the last three months and there continues to be some impact that we see and that’s noticeable around some of the more major conventions and events in these markets particularly when they're not business meetings. They're more meetings or events where people are paying their own way and so it's impacting pricing to some extent in those markets and we're not quite seeing the same compression that we've seen in prior years. So that’s really where it’s had an impact and I'd say that's fairly typical whether its San Francisco, LA, San Diego, New York, there is no doubt that it’s a bigger impact in a major city than it is in a suburban market or a secondary market.

Ian Weissman

Analyst

Okay. And just another question on San Francisco, clearly not only with your sector, there are other sectors that are facing dislocation or at least market concern about San Francisco and the future of demand in that marketplace, but the reality is that businesses as usual in San Francisco and tech demand is still very strong and it's still a very, very health market. So as it relates to hotel fundamentals, as you think about business demand for lodging in that market, how much of it is just group saying, you know what, it's an expensive market and we're looking elsewhere and we're going to take our group travel to a cheaper city.

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes, I don't think we're seeing that at all. I think there is a reason that groups go to San Francisco both to have their meetings and to have their conventions. It's because it's the best business choice for them. Conventions go there because they get great attendance there and many of these conventions are for-profit conventions for the associations that might be putting them on and so where they go is way more important than the hotel rates, which by the way are paid for the individuals, not by the association. So when they pick some city, it's not picking a city based upon the cost of the hotel rooms. It's picking a city based upon where they think it's going to get the best attendance because ifs a for-profit meeting. And of course people go to San Francisco because it's a great city to go to. It's got great weather most of the year. It's got tremendous amenities. It's beautiful. It's got great airlift. All of those are factors for meetings. So I think pricing is by far -- would typically be pretty far down on our list for the times the conventions that go there. But the cheer leader convention or the basket lever convention, they're not going to San Francisco because they're not going to do well in San Francisco because the people will have to pay their own way can't afford it. But they were never going there. They're going to other cities. They're going to St. Louis and Minneapolis and Indianapolis and Kansas City and a lot of the secondary markets.

Ian Weissman

Analyst

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you very much for your color.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Bill Crow with Raymond James.

Bill Crow

Analyst

Hey. Good morning, guys. Jon, let me just make sure I am clear, your commentary on '16 sounded positive as far as the Group business and your forward bookings etcetera. So should we read into that there has been no change to the scenarios you painted on '16 and '17 at your Analyst Day last month?

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes, we haven't seen enough change in the trend that we've adjusted Q4 for to change our view of '16 yet. If late in the quarter it looks like those trends have continued and may continue, then at that point in time we certainly would change our view of '16 and be more cautious. But as the Fed says, we're data dependent. We need to see what happens on the macro side. Is this a soft patch on a quarterly basis like we've seen throughout the last five years or is it something that's more expensive from a time perspective.

Bill Crow

Analyst

And Jon we faced very challenging comps for the industry and fourth quarter, but also in the first quarter of next year and I am just thinking about how we get some momentum back in the Group? How do you -- I am not looking for guidance for our first quarter of '16, but how do you see that quarter shaping up relative to your kind of baseline expectations for the year as a whole next year.

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes, just give me one second to pull up page for how the pace breaks down for the year. So if we look at the -- if we look at the first quarter, on a Group basis we're up 7.5% right now, room nights are down just shy of 5%, but rates up almost 13% and some of that San Francisco Bill, with Super bowl some of it’s JPMorgan in San Francisco because JPMorgan continues to grow and become an increasingly higher rated city wide for which five years ago it almost didn’t exist.

Bill Crow

Analyst

Okay. Two other quick topics, hopefully quickly, Jon we've seen some rates in other sectors that have been in hot markets all of a sudden find themselves overweight of market that maybe going in the wrong direction. I am thinking it's specifically Houston, which might be unique in the country, but the success of Houston also has led to challenges for some several companies. Do you think about your waiting in San Francisco and is it where you want to be? Is it right for trimming? How do you think about that market?

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes, we think about our waiting all the time. I think we've indicated previously we feel comfortable with where we are, but we wouldn’t feel comfortable being higher than where we are from a concentration perspective. We have to look at these markets all on a long term basis and we choose them because of the underlying dynamics. How difficult it is to build and so a market like San Francisco is a good example of a market that will likely have more volatility and variability through different parts of the cycles. But on a long term basis, based upon the urbanization trend, based upon the difficulty of building and based upon the industries that are there and their growth outlooks over the long term, the creative industries whether it’s technology, biomedical, the cloud, some would say Ubers in the transportation business not the technology business and the same for other businesses we would typically categorize as technology but we view the market as a heavier not less diversified industry base. Because of it being subject to capital and capital flows and so it’s going to have more variability, but we believe it will have better long term performance and there will be times where it will underperform. Just like Washington DC a good example, where it's got high barriers to entry. People will ultimately build, but it’s harder to build, it takes longer and your height limit is a big limiting factor. So it is a place we want to own and we think it’s a good place to own for the long term.

Bill Crow

Analyst

Okay. And Jon finally for me, just looking at -- you're coming up on your sixth year anniversary. So congratulations on that. When you hired your team, one of the things you stressed was that this was unlikely to be a lifetime sort of job that you were going to be opportunistic. I am looking at the multiple so you're creating below several of the select service peers, you're creating 20% plus below NAV, 20% plus below what we think the assets on a private market basis would be. M&A is conducive to further activity. How do you think about it, it's clearly you can’t be having as much fine as you were a year ago.

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes. So based upon what you said, it sounds like we're pretty cheap and a good buy. So we certainly would think that’s the case. So really not our job to be focused on value. We think about strategic issues there or major transactional issues much more on a long term basis than a short term basis and it’s the buyers and sellers out there that will have an impact on short term values. But we're more focused on long term value creation and those who want to participate in that, maybe they’ll see a good opportunity and those that are short term focused, maybe they should be off a bit today and not Pebblebrook. So, that’s kind of the way we look at it Bill.

Bill Crow

Analyst

Okay. Thanks Jon.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Jim Sullivan with Cowen Group.

Jim Sullivan

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. Jon, just to follow on the last question from Bill, I am curious when you think about the acquisition market this was something that was touched on I know in San Francisco, but given the negative revisions that we've been seeing, are you attempting to see the spread between the bid and the private market and the acquisition market widening. And what’s your outlook for transaction activity in that respect over the next year?

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes I think for -- I think as we said, we're not terribly active in the market today for obvious reasons, but I think as we see what’s going on in the marketplace, I don’t know that we've seen a change in values yet in the major gateway cities. We've seen some thinning of the buyer pool obviously primarily REITs have in many cases dropped out on the pursuit side, but in many cases it's been replaced by international capital today that has a longer term focus than may be some of the domestic buyers to do. So can’t really speak too much to other markets Jim because we don’t really monitor them, but at least as it relates to the gateway market, the buyer pools are a little more limited, but we haven’t really seen any kind of material change in pricing.

Jim Sullivan

Analyst

Okay. And then second question and you may have touched on this earlier so apologies if I missed it, but on the international inward bound travel trends, you've cited that the data flow that we usually get from the Department of Commerce has been disrupted this year. It's quite late, but I just wonder your sense is that, that trend is deteriorating, it’s getting worse or has it stabilized and as we think out toward 2016 any thoughts you have about where that’s going to go?

Jon Bortz

Management

Well I think we've probably seen it and again it’s anecdotal, but we've probably seen it get a little weaker as the year went on and we're coming up on either late in the quarter or in the first quarter lapping the exchange rates from earlier this year. Now there maybe some delay in the impact just because international travel tends to be booked a little further out than domestic travel, but I think as we laugh and we continue to see growth in global travel we should see that pickup certainly some point next year unless the exchange rates continue to worsen and/or the economies around the world continue to get weaker.

Jim Sullivan

Analyst

Okay. And then final question from me, you touched on the personnel turnover at the managerial level earlier and I know we've talked about the impact of minimum wage changes in some of the markets particularly in the West Coast and that continues. And I am just curious as you think about margin opportunity and margin pressure over the next year to what extent is it going to be hard to resist upward moving personnel cost?

Jon Bortz

Management

I think we've been seeing upper trends in personnel cost and they've been able to be offset with -- more than offset by productivity enhancements and cost reductions and that’s practice implementation for us and so from our viewpoint, we think that likely to continue for some time. Salaries at the top level like executives that are certainly likely to go up more than inflation as the market becomes and is more competitive it’s a pretty small percentage of the overall cost base of our hotel. So we've had relief from energy. We've relief from insurance. We've had and we should continue to have relief from insurances as long as there aren’t any Hurricanes or earthquakes of any material size. We've had -- in general we don’t have a lot of our stabilized properties, growing property taxes to any great extent because we have half of our portfolio in California and Prop 13 limits that increases at 2% a year once reassessed on acquisitions. So we've some benefit from that on an overall basis as well.

Jim Sullivan

Analyst

Good. Okay. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Jeff Donnelly with Wells Fargo.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

Good morning, guys. Just maybe speaking on that topic Jon with margins, what sort of revenue growth do you think you need in '16 to cover the growth in cost per occupied room and do you think there is a wide range of that as you look across your markets if the hurdle is materially different across markets or do you think it's fairly similar?

Jon Bortz

Management

Well, no it definitely varies by market Jeff, but we're just -- we haven't even gotten our budget yet for next year. So we don't really have any data to be able to answer your question. You can see this year we've limited our cost increases to 1.4% through -- I think it's 1.4% right through the first nine months.

Raymond Martz

Management

Yes.

Jon Bortz

Management

And that was about a 4% increase in revenues. Likely that expense level would be higher than that next year and also higher assuming our revenues are higher than that, but some of the initiatives that we have in terms of out-store seeing, restaurants, leasing them out, outsourcing other business within the hotels. All of those things are leading to greater productivity and a mitigation of those cost increases we were talking about earlier from a wage perspective. I would expect our staff level wages to be up at least I would say around 3% next year throughout the portfolio and of course benefit cost are running higher than that probably mid to upper single digits at least.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

And just maybe going back to Bill's question on Group pace, maybe you have the data out, thanks for giving us Q1. Can you repeat what the Group pace numbers are for Q3 and Q4 and maybe even tell us what Q2 of '16 looks like as well so we can see a figure maybe ex Super Bowl?

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes, I can't repeat them because I didn't mention them yet. I'll tell you what they are Jeff.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

Thank you.

Jon Bortz

Management

And again this is a third for the whole year, the percentages get less and less for each quarter obviously and so I don't and again keep in mind that we're 24% Group in our portfolio. So I am not sure I would want you to read too much into it from an industry perspective. You get better information from some of the owners who have a broader group -- larger group and broader group properties and certainly some of the brands, but Q2 for us is up -- rooms are up 6.2%, ADR is up 8.5%, revenue is up 15.3%. Third quarter room nights are up 15%, ADR is up 22%, revenue is up 40% and then we don't really want to talk about Q4. Q4 room nights are down 17.8%, ADR is up 6.5%, revenue is down 12.4%. Again the base of these numbers gets pretty small as the year goes on Jeff.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

And you said those were '16 numbers.

Jon Bortz

Management

Those are '16 numbers yes.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

Okay. But repeat was moving for Q3 and Q4 of this year.

Jon Bortz

Management

Oh, so we mentioned Q3 in the call. Room nights were down 11%, ADR was up 6.1%, revenues down 5.6% on the Group side and for Q4, room nights are up 0.5%, ADR is up 2.4%, revenue is up 3.0%.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Jon Bortz

Management

And if you care for the year, room nights are down 4%, ADR is up 5.6%, revenue is up 1.3%.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

Great. Thank you. And maybe just switching gears on last question, with just [Danahen] [ph], you've got an option to explore exiting your joint venture there in New York obviously in late summer 2016. Have you seen your partner begin a process of maybe identifying someone to replace you guys? I was just curious in the past you've talked about on earnings calls and I was just wasn’t sure if you've seen any shift in their thinking what their options are?

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes, our partner is open to finding a new partner if we should decide to depart the joint venture.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

But nothing that will lead to believe this could be coming sooner than where your option currently expires or comes about.

Jon Bortz

Management

I think our partner is motivated to not be in a position where the entire portfolio is sold.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Jon Bortz

Management

So that would hopefully answer your question.

Jeff Donnelly

Analyst

No understood. Well, thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Wes Golladay with RBC Capital Markets.

Wes Golladay

Analyst

Yes, good morning, guys. You talk about how hard it is to forecast the current quarters. I imagine it's pretty hard now to revenue manage the properties as well as due to changing dynamics. How good -- how hard is it to find a good revenue manager these days and what is your progress on that front?

Jon Bortz

Management

So we're actually in pretty good shape right now on the revenue management side. As I mentioned earlier, we've had fairly significant turnover within the portfolio and we've been pretty successful in being able to find good revenue managers because of the quality of our assets and the interesting nature of our assets and the kind of culture there is with our operator. So I think right now, we've two vacant positions within the portfolio, which would be pretty typical on an ongoing basis and one of those is for the Zeppelin, which the hotel is going to close November 1.

Wes Golladay

Analyst

Okay. Thanks a lot guys.

Jon Bortz

Management

Thanks Wes.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Lukas Hartwich with Green Street Advisors.

Lukas Hartwich

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Can you talk about what you're hearing from the corporate customers in the tech industry? Are you hearing the tone change at all?

Jon Bortz

Management

Not at all. No, they're all still growing like mad. So we've started the RFP process. We look to be getting very healthy increases in the tech markets of LA, Santa Monica in particular San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Boston. So everybody pushes back on rate increases in corporate negotiations, but they're going to end up pretty healthy in those markets and we continue to see increased volume out of our technology accounts.

Lukas Hartwich

Analyst

That’s helpful. And then also given where the stock trades right now the discount, I am curious how you guys are thinking about asset sales?

Jon Bortz

Management

It doesn’t really change our thinking per se, Lucas. Again short term valuation of the stock is not really a good – it’s not a good criteria to make long term decisions on. So we're focused on disposing property that we ultimately think aren’t going to grow an increase in value at a healthy level or a meaningful laagered within the portfolio.

Lukas Hartwich

Analyst

Great. That's it for me. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Neil Malkin with RBC Capital Markets.

Neil Malkin

Analyst

Hey guys, good morning. Just a couple of follow-up questions. First off with your guidance reduction, how much of it is a function of Pebblebrook asset specific issues versus more macro demand uncertainty?

Jon Bortz

Management

It’s a combination of the two. There is definitely some impact we're seeing within our portfolio as we said of acting on our strategies to change our customer segments to drive rates and bottom line profitability with a willingness to give up occupancy and not grow revenue as much, but reposition the property to ultimately grow the bottom line in a much more significant way and we laid that out in our Investor Day. We've certainly urged people to take a look at what we laid out for the properties we bought last year and how that’s leading to help the growth in bottom line profitability, some more quickly than others as we change the customer segmentation and in some cases change the customers completely. Some of it is slower ramp up from renovations as I indicated related to WLA in particular, but Zephyr as well and then the rest of it is -- would be cautiousness about industry trends and a macro soft patch, which we'll see it if it has an impact on travel or not.

Neil Malkin

Analyst

Okay. All right. And then second question is you talked about technology, people having more pricing transparency real time things of that nature, do you think a way that you can compare it on your end in addition to over booking is trying to build up your business transient base or maybe give us some sort of advantage to booking further out from your more higher rated customers. Just so you're property managers have more confidence to raise rack rates or more shorter term walk in, just sort of combat the people barking at your booked rate when prices go down.

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes, there is a lot of different strategies depending upon the particular property that some of the ones we're using relate to what you describe which is trying to build a better base. It would not typically be corporate transient although you can certainly expand your corporate accounts in order to get more volume ultimately into property. But it’s really about getting, in many cases about getting a slightly larger group base on the books or getting a group base further out on the books and not be subject to the short term volatility where a group may or may not show up in the short term. So it is about getting a base in some cases. In other cases it's about overbooking more, understanding that there are going to be more cancellations. In some cases it can be about trying to understand further out what are your high loyalty redemption days and not waiting to the last minute to get the last 5% on the books, trying to do that further out. In other cases, it's using guaranteed rates, so non-refundable rates that might further out be a 5% or 10% or 15% discount off your borrow rate, so a lot of different strategies that we’re using depending upon the property.

Neil Malkin

Analyst

Okay. Great and then real quick last question is, you're using some market RevPAR share in San Francisco, I am assuming what you alluded to and I am wondering does that poke a hole in your experiential stays, trump everything else or is it the fact that you can get a lot of good Yelp reviews that the price is too high. The leisure person just will pick somewhere else to stay. Is that -- does it kind of poke a hole in that thesis or is the reason you're losing share at least temporarily because of the repositioning or the turnover and key revenue driving employees.

Jon Bortz

Management

Yes. In San Francisco well a meaningful part of the share we've lost as we mentioned in the call was for the four properties that have transition managers and in one case where we not only transitioned the manager, but changed the name of the property. So that share was a couple of hundred basis points on our San Francisco performance. Zephyr actually picked up share in the quarter and was all in ADR. So we picked up a little over 400 basis points of share, so good positive signs in terms of the experiential side. We don't have any lack of confidence about the benefits of delivering a property that's unique and experiential and that's what the customer is looking for and willing to pay for. We do lose some share and did lose some share within the portfolio where we were lacking in the Senior Leadership out in San Francisco, which is in the process of being remedied, but we know that from just looking at the share side. So no concerns about the experiential side at all Neil

Neil Malkin

Analyst

All right. Thank you for the color. I appreciate it very much.

Operator

Operator

And with no further questions in the queue, I would like to turn the conference back to the CEO, Jon Bortz.

Jon Bortz

Management

Thanks Dana. Thanks everyone for participating and we look forward to a better update next quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And that does conclude today's presentation. We thank you for your participation.