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Xenia Hotels & Resorts Inc (XHR -0.07%)
Q1Â 2020 Earnings Call
May 11, 2020, 1:00 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Xenia Hotels & Resorts First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to turn the conference over to Lisa Ramey, Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead.
Lisa Ramey -- Vice President-Finance
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the first quarter 2020 earnings call and webcast for Xenia Hotels & Resorts. I'm here with Marcel Verbaas, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Barry Bloom, our President and Chief Operating Officer; and Atish Shah, our Chief Financial Officer. Marcel will begin with an overview of the current landscape and the company's recent actions, Barry will follow with more details on operations and Atish will finish the call discussing our balance sheet and liquidity.
Following today's prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. Before we get started, let me remind everyone that certain statements made on this call are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued earlier this morning, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today May 11, 2020, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold.
You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to net income and definitions of certain items referred to in our remarks and this morning's earnings release. An archive of this call will be available on our website for 90 days.
With that, I'll turn it over to Marcel to get started.
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Lisa, and thank you everyone for joining our call today. First of all, I hope that everyone is staying safe and healthy during these unprecedented times. While the world, the economy, the lodging industry and our company continue to be severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, our team is working extremely hard to assure that the company not only gets through this difficult time, but once again thrives when this crisis subsides.
So, before I give an overview of the most significant aspects impacting our business as we navigate these challenging waters, I would first like to thank our associates who have shown tremendous dedication as they are working harder than ever for the benefit of our company and our shareholders, while dealing with significant new challenges in their personal lives. I'm proud to be part of an incredible team that continues to rise for the challenges we face each and every day.
I also would like to thank and acknowledge the many impacted team members employed by our operators at our hotels, who'd have continued to take care of our guests, or in many cases, are anxious to return to work and provide for their families, while facing the many unknowns about the virus. Our thoughts are with all of them and especially those who have experienced health issues themselves or within their circles of family and friends.
When we spoke on our year-end earnings call in February, we discussed our expectation that 2020 would be a transitional year for the company as a few significant renovations and ramp-up from newly acquired assets were expected to negatively impact our cash flow while setting us up for enhanced growth in the years ahead. While we expected this transitional year, clearly at that time, we could not have envisioned the impact COVID-19 was going to have on our industry. This impact has been enormous and unprecedented.
The year started relatively strong for us with both January and February coming in slightly ahead of our expectations. The COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold in January with the United States confirming its first case, but we did not begin to see a significant impact to our portfolio until halfway through the quarter. The Group segment, which represented approximately a third of our revenues in 2019 and is the most significant leading indicator of demand in the lodging industry, began to see a severe uptick in cancellations of future bookings during the last week of February and into the month of March.
On March 11th, we went through our previously issued full-year 2020 guidance as the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic continued to increase exponentially. On March 31st, we announced that in cooperation with our operating partners, we suspended or were in the process of suspending operations at 24 of our 39 properties. During the month of April, the number of temporarily shuttered hotels and resorts increased to 31. The remainder of the company's properties continued to operate with staffing and expense levels reflecting the reduced levels of demand experienced at those hotels.
In some cases, the temporary closure of our properties was a result of a mandate from the city or county in which the property is located such as in Key West and Napa. In a lot of our hotels and resorts, our asset managers worked with our operators to conduct a rigorous property-by-property analysis to guide our decisions regarding temporary closures. Barry will go through the factors that went into the decisions to suspend operations at our hotels as well as the aspects that are driving our reopening decisions in more detail later on.
Suffice it to say that the health and well-being of guests and associates is at the top of the list, followed by cash flow considerations both in the short and longer term. We are pleased with the efforts by our hotel operators to decisively and significantly reduce expenses. Our operators have been able to substantially reduce staffing and other expenses to minimize cash outflows during this time when our properties are either shuttered or running at historically low occupancies. Throughout this time, our asset management team has been working closely with our operating partners, and we believe, now more than ever, that being affiliated with some of the strongest brand companies in the industry is a significant strategic advantage for our company.
Our largest brand companies, Marriott, Hyatt and Kimpton have provided strong leadership and guidance across their platforms, as we navigate this pandemic together. We believe that our operators have significant advantages as they respond to this crisis through their ability to implement and communicate their best-in-class safety and cleanliness initiatives, their premier revenue generation systems and loyalty programs and their well-capitalized balance sheet. We believe that our affiliations with these companies will prove to be vital as we recover from this unprecedented downturn.
In addition to the expense reduction efforts undertaken at the properties, we have taken significant actions at the corporate level to reduce general and administrative expenses and capital expenditures. Our anticipated full-year cash G&A expense has been reduced by more than 20% or approximately $5.5 million, excluding non-recurring restructuring costs. Additionally, we canceled or deferred approximately $50 million out of our 2020 capital expenditure budget, as Barry will detail in his remarks.
Turning to the three potential disposition transactions we have previously disclosed. As we announced in April, the sale of Renaissance Austin Hotel did not close as contemplated in our amended agreement and the agreement was terminated. We retained the $2 million deposit that was previously released from escrow. In early March, we entered into an agreement to sell our 7-hotel Kimpton-managed portfolio at attractive terms.
Last week, the sale did not close as scheduled as the buyer parties failed to close when obligated to do so. We are vigorously pursuing the release of the $20 million deposit currently held in escrow. Regarding the sale of Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel, there continues to be no change with timing or terms of the transaction. The closing is currently scheduled to occur by the end of July and i.e., $7.75 million non-refundable deposit remains in escrow. We cannot provide assurances that this transaction will close as currently agreed upon or at all.
As a result of our actions over the past several years, we believe that we're well-positioned coming into this crisis with an outstanding portfolio, a strong balance sheet and manageable debt maturities. While the social and governmental response to the pandemic has had a dramatic effect on demand throughout the travel industry, we believe that our liquidity position and strong relationships with our banks and our capital providers will assist us in these difficult times. We continue to engage in constructive dialog with our lender group as we attempt to reach agreement on amendments to our unsecured credit facility and their unsecured term loans and are hopeful this will occur in the second quarter. We look forward to finding the best path forward with our lender group that allows the company to be well-positioned, pretty eventual ramp-up of business.
As we look ahead to a safe reopening of the economy and the easing of stay-at-home or similar restrictions across the country, we will continue to work with our operating partners to evaluate the best strategy and approach for commencing operations at our currently shuttered properties. Currently, we are planning to recommence operations at five of our hotels before the end of May, bringing the total of open hotels in our portfolio to 13 by the end of the month. These hotels are primarily smaller resorts or lifestyle boutique properties appealing to guests who are driving through these locations. These properties collectively represent one one-third of the properties in our portfolio, but only about 15% of our total rooms count. We believe this will provide us with a valuable view into the way we can expect demand to return throughout the remainder of the portfolio, while limiting the ramp up in operating expenses.
Our success in significantly increasing the theme of our portfolio to many different sources of demand should benefit us, as we navigate through the current health crisis and work to stabilize our operations as lodging demand recuperates. Our high quality portfolio has historically benefited from a balanced mix between group, corporate transient and leisure demand. We are hopeful that our geographic diversification, our exposure to drive through markets, the concentration of resorts in our portfolio and our lack of reliance on citywide conventions and international travel will aid us as we emerge and recover from this crisis. We expect that the way that business will recover in our industry will likely be uneven across markets and segments. We are fortunate to own a large number of hotels and resorts that can be nimble and pivot to attract various sources of demand, including the drive through leader business that is likely to return earlier than corporate transient and group demand.
Our experienced management team has successfully navigated through previous challenging times in our industry. Having owned many different types of hotels and navigating through the ups and downs of various cycles has prepared us well to draw on these experiences and be creative as we evaluate our strategy looking ahead. With a strong liquidity position and excellent relationships with brands, operators, brokers, financial institutions and our capital sources, we believe we are well-equipped to get through this extraordinary time and position the company for future growth.
Barry will now provide additional details on our operations.
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
Thank you, Marcel. Today, I'll be discussing our property performance for the first quarter, our decision-making process surrounding temporarily suspending operations and plan to resume operations in our hotels, and providing details regarding our historic and future capital expenditures. Financial information I'll be speaking about is on a same-property basis for the 38 hotels owned at quarter-end.
Same-property RevPAR declined 27.6% for the quarter, as occupancy dropped approximately 20 points and rate was down 3.3%. RevPAR for January was down 3.2% and February was down 5.2% to last year, both slightly ahead of our expectations as we had anticipated significant disruption from renovations of Park Hyatt Aviara and The Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City. March was down 67%, as 24 of our hotels had suspended or were in the process of temporarily suspending operations as of March 31st.
Same-property EBITDA margin was 15% as a result of hotel closures, related costs and the accrual of certain furlough costs totaling approximately $6 million. Despite our operators' best efforts, reacting quickly to an eroding demand environment was challenging. Group business for the quarter was 35% with transient at 65% generally in line with our historic annual trends. As we look ahead, the vast majority of Group business for the second quarter has been canceled, although our hotels have made significant efforts to rebook that business into the latter half of 2020.
As of the end of April, group cancellations have resulted in approximately $70 million of lost rooms revenue for the year, nearly all cancellations coming from events scheduled from March through June. While some of this business has been successfully rebooked for later in 2020 and 2021, there are no assurances that this business will come to fruition. As business returns, we expect leisure demand which was approximately 25% of our total demand in 2019 to recover first, particularly in the form of vacation and other drive-through business at our leisure-focused lifestyle hotels and our destination resorts, followed by corporate and group demand and ultimately larger group programs.
When we looked at temporarily suspending operations at our hotels, we first considered the potential impact of remaining open on our managers [Phonetic] employees and their personal safety. We then performed rigorous hotel-by-hotel analysis, books on expectations for near-term demand and incremental costs to remain open versus closed. We worked with our operators on developing detailed plans for maintaining the safety and security of our hotels while they are closed and maintaining 24 hours maintenance and security services.
At our eight hotels that remained open, we've learned valuable lessons on how our operators can operate full-service hotels in a very low occupancy environment. Occupancy for April in these hotels averaged approximately 6%, but costs were well maintained and we believe that there was no incremental cost to keeping them open versus temporarily suspending operations. Many of our hotels remain open are on markets where competitors are also open, and we look at those markets as relative bright spots as economic activity begins to pick up.
In recent weeks, we have transformed our analytical lens to look more closely at reopening certain of our hotels, in addition to the obvious state and local regulations and ordinances, we are focused on the ability to maintain appropriate levels of cleanliness, physical standards and safety for hotel employees and guests with a particular focus on identifying near term business opportunities. We believe that drive destination leisure oriented hotels may have the quickest ramp up in the current environment. We are working closely with our property-level management teams, as well as providing input to our major operators in designing new staffing and business models will allow us the opportunity to flex costs as demand rebounds. These include the alteration of food and beverage venues relying primarily on Grab and Go concepts as hotels ramp up, providing deep cleaning and sanitizing housekeeping services primarily front checkout and relying on touch less services such as mobile check in and checkout.
We expect that many of these changes to the operating model will become permanent aspects of our industry's operating structure. Our experienced asset management team and portfolio initiative efforts, including the deep knowledge of our hotels we have gained through our property optimization process have positioned the company well for this task.
As we reopened hotel, we expect to incur additional one-time and ongoing costs we have not historically incurred, which will undoubtedly include equipment and supply designs to promote and enhanced guest and employee safety and aiding insurance -- ensuring compliance of social distancing requirement. We fully endorsed HLA safe state program as an umbrella for the specific programs that are being developed by each of our brands and managers. As we evaluate demand and the ultimate pace of the ramp-up in each hotel, we will also consider the one-time costs we may experience in shifting these business models, including physical alterations and severance costs in order to permanently reduce our hotels staffing amount.
Expense controls will be a primary focus as hotels may ramp-up slowly from initial occupancy levels. As a result, we would likely see our full-service hotels operate more like select service hotels in terms of staffing and amenities offered. We expect the hotel staffing will reduced as we may leave entire guest from floors and areas of meeting space out of inventory for extended periods of time. Many of our group-oriented hotels and destination resorts will pivot to attract a higher component of leisure travel in the coming months and will also focus on small meetings business as we continue to seek opportunities for group business in the hopefully not too distant future.
As Marcel discussed, as we focus on maintaining liquidity across our platform, we evaluated our original capital expenditure budget, expenditure budget to $110 million to $130 million and have canceled preferred approximately $50 million of capex, eliminating non-essential budget expenditures and continuing primarily project that were in progress for forged materials have been ordered. We are now expecting to spend approximately $70 million in capital expenditures this year.
During the quarter, we invested $22 million of capital into our portfolio. In February, we completed the meeting space renovations at The Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City and Western Oaks Houston. Our largest project for this year, the transformation of Park Hyatt Aviara continue to progress with relatively minor changes to the scope and timing as a result of COVID-19. We have now completed the guest rooms, corridors and meeting space renovations. The major renovation of the lobby, lobby bar and outdoor terrace began during the second quarter, we were able to somewhat shorten the timeline for this portion of the project due to the hotel being temporarily closed. We are pleased with the execution to date of the major renovation of the exterior, including the pool area, exterior function space and upgrades of all landscaping.
Overall, we are on track or slightly ahead of our initial timeline as we have been able to complete some phases of the project faster given the resort has temporarily suspended operations. We continue to plan and design the remaining components of the renovation, which include the conversion of existing specialty restaurant into a new three meal dining concept, conversion of existing three meal restaurant into highly functional meeting space for small groups and the renovation of the spa and fitness area. We're making great progress on the planning of shut focused specialty restaurant as part of the renovation of the golf clubhouse.
Even the continued excellent playing condition of the golf course, which is the home of the LPGA Classic, we made the decision to defer the golf course renovation to a later date. Other than the golf course improvements we continue to expect this project to be fully completed in the first quarter of 2021. We continue to be excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for this resort post transformation.
Two of the forces that originally drove the design are of the transformation were; one to be more appealing to family oriented leisure business to dramatically design of our pool areas, and two, to create additional meeting space within the hotel optimally designed to serve small meetings. We are fortunate that these components of these renovation are ideally matched with our expectations of demand in the near future.
Initial reception and reaction to design of these spaces from target markets, including families in the first case, and leading industry players in the biotech and pharmaceutical business in the second case, has been very strong. We are continuing with the guest room renovation at Marriott Woodlands, which is expected to begin this month to be completed in the third quarter, however, have deferred renovation of the guest bathrooms and components to a later date. We are also continuing with the renovation of the existing meeting space of Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress scheduled for this summer. We've reduced the scope of this project by eliminating or deferring some non-essential components of the project primarily in the pre-function area.
With that, I will turn the call over to Atish.
Atish Shah -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Barry, and good afternoon. I'm going to discuss three topics today. First, our liquidity position; second, our monthly recurring cash expenses; and third, I will provide an update on our balance sheet and discussions with our lenders.Starting with our liquidity. The company continues to be well positioned from a liquidity perspective. We have taken actions to improve liquidity over the last eight weeks including drawing on our line of credit, reducing corporate expenses, curtailing capital expenditures to the extent possible and working with our operators to reduce property expenses. We intend to suspend our dividend and cease share repurchases through at least year-end.
At the end of the first quarter, we had approximately $400 million of cash and cash equivalents. This reflects approximately $365 million of cash at the corporate level and approximately $35 million of hotel level working capital. Additionally, we had over $65 million of restricted cash held in FF&E replacement reserves as of the end of the first quarter. We expect to utilize a portion of this restricted cash for hotel operating expenses as certain of our operators have allowed for this temporary use subject to specific conditions such as replenishment.
Turning to my next topic, our monthly recurring cash expenses. We provided this information in the release we issued this morning. We are presenting this information assuming all hotels had temporarily suspended operations. Though we expect to have 13 hotels operating by the end of the month, this scenario is one way to assess our liquidity runway. Assuming all 39 hotels were to temporarily suspend operations, we estimate our near-term monthly recurring expenses would be approximately $20 million. This includes health insurance costs for furloughed employee -- property employees, as well as wages and benefits for limited staff at properties and fixed costs such as property taxes and insurance. It also includes our corporate general and administrative expenses.
Our monthly cash debt service is an additional $5 million, should all that service be paid in accordance with current debt agreements. If hotels were to continue having suspended operations beyond a few months, our operators would begin to further reduce costs. Our monthly recurring expenses would decline from approximately $20 million to approximately $17 million. Again, this is exclusive of debt service which would add another $5 million per month, should it be paid for current debt agreements.
If properties were to suspend operations for a longer duration, we would look for opportunities to further ratchet down hotel operating and other expenses. Now that we have excluded capital expenditures from the monthly expense rate, just provided, given the capital expenditures are more discretionary and tied to specific projects that are best to view separately. In addition, we can utilize existing FF&E replacement reserves for a portion of planned capital expenditures.
For the remainder of 2020, capital expenditures would average approximately $4 million of cash expense per month. If all hotels have operation suspended for many months, we would further restrict capital expenditures to only essential life safety and minor maintenance projects. Overall, we believe our rate of monthly expenses inclusive of capital expenditures currently yields more than a year of runway, again assuming all hotels were to suspend operations.
Moving ahead to my final topic, our balance sheet. We had a strong and straightforward balance sheet going into this crisis. We now have approximately $1.6 billion of debt after drawing the entire availability on our line of credit. Approximately 35% is secured by property mortgages and 65% of our debt is unsecured. At quarter end, our net debt to adjusted EBITDAre was 5.2 times, reflecting the severe downturn that began in March. At the end of the first quarter, our weighted average interest rate was 3.32%. We anticipate our weighted average interest rate at present is approximately 3.5% due to an increase in spread on our unsecured borrowings.
As to discussions with our lenders, we are appreciative of the support we are receiving from them. On the unsecured side, our lender group consists of top notch banks with whom we have strong relationships. We are negotiating an amendment to our unsecured borrowing agreements with our lenders. As part of the agreement, we expect to have flexibility to manage our business over the month ahead. We also intend to address our financial maintenance covenants into next year.
At the end of the first quarter, we breached one financial maintenance covenants we expect the amendment to address that as well. As to our secured debt, we have a mix of bank and life company lenders, who do not have any CMBS debt. We are in discussions with several of our fixed secured lenders to obtain temporary covenant waivers and additional temporary relief. As at the end of the first quarter, we were in compliance with all secured debt covenants.
In closing, I would like to acknowledge the support of all our constituents as we manage through the unprecedented global crisis due to COVID-19. We are fortunate to have strong relationships with our operating companies, lenders and other industry participants. We entered this crisis with a high-quality well located diverse portfolio of assets. We hope to emerge from this crisis having preserved value for our shareholders and being positioned for future growth.
With that, I'll turn it back over to Elie for our Q&A session as we are ready to take our first question.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Thomas Allen with Morgan Stanley.
Thomas Allen -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Hey, good mid-day everyone. And have you -- so interesting comments about reopening hotels, can you just talk about kind of where current -- what you're seeing in current bookings? Any promising results there? Thanks.
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Well, it's hard to talk about current bookings frankly, Thomas. I mean, we obviously -- these decisions that we're making around some of these properties that we're reopening are really not driven as much by what we see on the books or what existing reservations look like or anything like that. It is much more driven by looking at, kind of, market dynamics and expectations of potential leisure demand that will start coming back to some of those assets, a little bit more quickly than other properties we are -- as you know, most of the forward-looking booking information that you can normally hang your head on is related to group demand and group demand has obviously completely disappeared and even what stuff that's still on the books for previous, it's just highly questionable whether any of that starts materializing.
So more of the decisions around reopenings are truly based on just a sense for the markets having some -- having very in-depth knowledge of those markets, seeing what's kind of happening with overall kind of economic activity in some of those markets and drawing some conclusions from that we know we're going to have to, kind of, build up from basically a zero base for most of these properties. So we're going to open up some of those properties. We have pretty good hopes that we can start rebuilding some occupancy there. But it's also based on what we've seen with some of the assets that have remained open. We have paid assets like, Barry talked about, that are on average rent in the mid single-digits occupancy in April, but at that level, we were running probably profitability or lack of profitability that was very similar if not a little bit better than being closed. So we know that we can open up some of these assets kind of start building up hopefully a little bit of occupancy and certainly not lose more money in the early going there.
Thomas Allen -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
And that brings me to my next question, how are you guys generally thinking about breakeven levels both from a cash flow and then from a EBITDA level?
Atish Shah -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
So when we look at it, Thomas, from the -- at the hotel EBITDA level, we have centered around on a portfoliowide basis to breakeven occupancy of around 40%. Now it varies a lot property-to-property, we have some hotels in the larger scale resorts that may have breakevens as high as 50% and we have some of the more urban hotels that we can operate in a very similar, just like service model, because breakevens are down in the low 30% range. But around 40% overall for the portfolio gets us to zero hotel EBITDA.
And then beyond that, I think if you were to layer in corporate overhead and debt service would be in the 50% occupancy range, roughly speaking. And that -- these numbers also reflect a rate decline because obviously we would anticipate that rates will be lower coming out of this, so we're not assuming kind of the same rate profile as pre-COVID initially to come up with that 40% to 50% range.
Thomas Allen -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
And Atish any -- like around what kind of rate is that assuming?
Atish Shah -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
That assumes about a 30%, that's ADR.
Thomas Allen -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Well. Okay. All very helpful. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Austin Wurschmidt with KeyBanc.
Austin Wurschmidt -- KeyBanc -- Analyst
Yes. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I was curious if there was any discussion whatsoever about renegotiating the Kimpton transaction pushing out the date? And then also curious kind of what the grounds are for their claim to breaching the contract and acquisition agreement?
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, as you could probably imagine, Austin, not a whole a lot I can say around that. The reality is that we were ready, willing, able to close the date of closing the buyer did not show up for closing. So we -- as we've said in our announcement we are vigorously pursuing the $20 million deposits that's held in escrow. So I really can't say much more about that at this time.
Austin Wurschmidt -- KeyBanc -- Analyst
Understood. And then -- are there any hotels beyond the five that you've announced where you see kind of a future of reopening from mandated closures getting lifted that would otherwise be open to the extent that those mandates weren't in place?
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
Yes. Austin Marcel mentioned in his commentary about the hotels we have closed by mandate today are in Key West and Napa, where we have two those would generally fit the profile of the hotels we're opening in terms of having high components of leisure demand and being in markets where there's a lot of drive to business.
Austin Wurschmidt -- KeyBanc -- Analyst
So those two are not included in the five that you expect to reopen by the end of May?
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
Correct.
Austin Wurschmidt -- KeyBanc -- Analyst
And is there any date...
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Correct. To be clear, it's three hotels, it's two hotels in Napa, one in Key West. And as you may have seen in the Keys obviously as a drive to market that is particularly coming from South Florida, pretty heavily dependent on that area. So the South Florida has been a little bit behind the rest of Florida as far as being allowed to reopen some of their economic activity. So it's going to be pretty much tied to what you'll see in South Florida whether the Keys will likely start lifting there restrictions. And we'll react relatively quickly obviously to the extent that we can move forward on those.
But it's going to be part of -- those are to Barry's point specifically driven by that what we probably would act a little bit more quickly to open up those hotels, but given where we are, there may be some other assets in the portfolio too that will end up on a similar timeline. We're continuing to review it really on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis and obviously you don't make a decision to open up a hotel by tomorrow, you need a few weeks to kind of prepare for it and to make sure that to reopen up the booking channels and all those kind of things without making too many adjustments to that.
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
The only thing I would add is, yes, 16 hotels in total that have less than 200 rooms. So we view kind of this next -- these five hotels that are opening over the next couple of weeks is a way to really understand and assess the hotel opening process and what demand looks like and how we can go from there. So these are ones that we've already identified assuming it goes well, we'll we can -- we can look to others in our portfolio, I mean, as both Marcel and Barry mentioned, we have lot of diversity in the portfolio and hotels that either do a fair amount of leisure or can pivot toward doing more leisure. So we feel fortunate in that regard that we can build off of the experience around these first to continue that into the weeks ahead.
Austin Wurschmidt -- KeyBanc -- Analyst
Got it. Appreciate the thoughts. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Michael Bellisario with Baird.
Michael Bellisario -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Good afternoon, everyone.I wanted to follow a little bit on Houston, those two properties, more group exposure you mentioned a renovation or two at one of them. And then there is the obvious energy weakness, but it was your best-performing markets. So it's a -- how are you thinking out performance of these assets and the market as a whole moving forward from here and how we should think about maybe relative out performance in the near term despite all those other headwinds that I think you mentioned and I mentioned as well?
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
So I think as always we're going to take it in two pieces and each of the hotels is very different. Our Western hotels, the Oaks and Galleria serve a pretty broad demand based in terms of corporate demand and group demand. That Hotel happen -- both of those hotels happen to have some meeting space that is very well designed and has an ability, now both new space has been renovated to serve smaller meeting demand. As a note Galleria Mall is open, it opened May 1st and while traffic is light there, we view that also I think is a little bit of a near-term beacon in terms of attracting leisure business that's going to want to come in as it does from some of the -- both within the city but from outside of the city as well in terms of shopping and opportunities.
The Woodens are little different, that market -- that entire market has driven a lot by single company Exxon, and the reality is that today, Exxon is generating the same amount of room nights as most other large corporate demand generators throughout the country, which is very, very little in the hotels. So we've not had -- we -- while we were in dialog with them we don't have a sense for how the downturn in oil prices really affected their near term view. And at this point, we don't view it particularly any differently than we'd view any other large corporate demand generators in the portfolio.
Michael Bellisario -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Ari Klein with BMO Capital.
Ari Klein -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst
Thanks. Maybe just following up on the hotel openings question, when you think about your non-major focused hotels, when should -- when are you kind of planning or expecting those to begin opening and what are kind of the guide post there that you're looking at to start opening those?
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
I think, if you look at, kind of, in general as an asset class kind of larger urban hotels. So I think we've talked about our plans for -- and our intentions for our smaller leisure hotels, as well as our resorts so we think we can do transient business near-term. I think the guide post for your larger urban hotels are going to be two things; one, understanding that there is sufficient domestic travel both capacity and demand that there is -- but there are business travelers who are back on the road and are going to major urban centers during the week. And I think also looking at, in particular, certainly at least initially the kind of demand patterns and demand requests for smaller group meetings, which we think will follow individual business traveler demand by some period of time.
Handicapping those time periods right now is really something we're not doing -- we're just not handicapping that because we are looking at and we're -- everyday and every week, we're monitoring reservation flow or trying to understand whether people are calling initiating rooms, whether we're seeing demand not just in our hotels, but are we seeing commercial demand within the markets that our hotel serves. So I know it's not a perfect answer, but that's really the kind of where we are and how we're looking at it.
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, in some instances, there are certain amounts of meeting type businesses there still on books and we're obviously looking at it very, very closely to see if those could be real demand that will actually materialize. The other part about some of those larger assets is that you can imagine the start off expenses of getting a larger asset to operate again are a little bit more significance than some of these smaller hotels, so whereas we can get some comfort around the fact that we can open up a few more of these smaller leisure oriented hotels and run it with a very, very lean staffing model and not need a whole lot of occupancy to have results that are at least equal or hopefully better than results of being closed. There is obviously a little bit different decision-making that goes into the larger hotels, where it just -- is a larger or bigger expense base that you have to start off with.
Ari Klein -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst
Got it. And then just on the hotels that were planned to be sold and that didn't go through, are you putting them back on the market? How should we think about asset sales maybe more broadly and what is the market like currently that you're seeing?
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Well, as you can imagine, and as I'm sure you've witnessed and heard from many industry participants, obviously, the market is pretty much frozen as it relates to transactions right now. So that means that's probably shouldn't expect us to be overly active with any of these in the short. Now we will continue to evaluate whether we believe it's appropriate to potentially still sell these assets down the road and whether that's a better solution at whatever valuations are appropriate at that time versus continuing on selling some of these assets. What I will say is that when you look at the seven Kimpton Hotel that we own, we never sold them because we didn't like the assets. I mean, we'd like the assets there, high-quality assets, they fit the type of assets that work well within our portfolio.
The reason we were looking to sell them potentially was that we were taking advantage of some pretty good market conditions for assets of that nature that we felt we could sell very attractively, further strengthen the balance sheet, create some more flexibility overall for the company, while continuing to own this -- own these assets is not a burden for us. We like the properties, as a matter of fact, we think that these properties can work very well in this short-term situation where people are looking for more leisure, where a little bit more leisure demand will probably start filling hotels. So there -- these are properties that are open and will continue to be open, and we feel very good about still owning those assets.
Ari Klein -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst
Thanks for the color.
Operator
Our next question comes from Tyler Batory with Janney Capital Markets.
Tyler Batory -- Janney Capital Markets -- Analyst
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. You mentioned group cancellations March through June, curious what you're seeing beyond June in group business and then also curious if you can touch on cancellation fees as well?
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
So in the period beyond June, the reason we talked about March through June, Tyler, is that there has not been significant cancellations in the latter half of the year. There have been some cancellations, but not of significance, and I think, as you may have heard from others, what's certainly true from us is that there is little incentive for those groups to cancel now. They'd much rather wait to cancel closer in when we may not be able to perform as opposed to them canceling now when they would likely depending on the contract, but in many cases, the obligated to pay us some cancellation fees. So I think you'll see a little bit of a stalemate in terms of why there's a lot of group business on the books that may or may not actually intend to have their meetings when that time rolls around and we've seen some of that as we've rolled into June for example and seen that business start to fall off the books in a much more meaningful way.
As it relates to our rebooking, we've seen a decent amount of rebooking from the business that has canceled in March through June in the latter part of 2020 and in 2021. Again there are incentives for groups who want to do that because in many cases they're kind of protecting that cancellation fee until such time as they would cancel that business. So a lot of them was pushed out. It's hard to gauge whether they really ultimately will have their programs or not depending on a variety of circumstances, including obviously hotel availability as well as whether they're comfortable having their group in a meeting format and what regulations might be in place as it relates to meetings of various sizes.
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
The only thing I would add to that is, I think when you look at our group business and our group business cancellations and the amount of group bookings, it is probably not too dissimilar from what you're seeing from most of our peers. The reality is we're all dealing with the exact same situation which is we're all hopeful that this materializes the remainder of the year, but it's obviously not something you can absolutely count on, given all the uncertainties that everyone is well aware of.
Tyler Batory -- Janney Capital Markets -- Analyst
Okay, that makes sense. And then just as a follow-up question, when you look at some of the properties in some of the markets that you are going to be opening here. Have you had any discussions concerning limits to occupancy either voluntary you guys putting in those or mandated by the governments. Obviously, there are some markets out there opening which limits to occupancy at restaurants and whatnot. So just curious how you might manage that on either the F&B side of things or on the room side?
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
So on the F&B side, we'll obviously intend to follow whatever regulations are in place in the jurisdictions at the time we open up them. As it relates to the hotels, we're -- at this point, we don't expect initial demand to cause any issues with that in at least one case of hotels were opening, we are only opening a section of hotel that happen and that will also -- that we know -- that is a very resort focus property and we know that will help us maintain what we think are the proper physical distance limitations at the pool of that hotel by limiting the number of guestrooms that we're actually making available.
Tyler Batory -- Janney Capital Markets -- Analyst
Okay. That's all from me. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from David Katz with Jefferies.
David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst
Hi. Afternoon everyone -- yes it is afternoon.
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Afternoon.
David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst
I found the commentary, I guess it was in Barry and then some of Marcel's as well. Particularly thoughtful around the reopening of hotels and thinking about looking at these hotels in the context of a limited service offering. And I'm wondering the degree to which, at some point, whether it's now or in the future you think about kind of reinventing some of the operating models to keep it that way, right that may provide a better profitability or a lower volatility operating model ongoing?
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
Thanks, David. So I think it's interesting and it's something that obviously we're working very closely with the brand and managers on and they are very focused on this as well. And I think you certainly -- they have certainly received a lot of input from the owner community that there are -- we need to rethink the entire business model and we look at what services we're providing, what services we're charging for, what services we're providing on a complimentary basis, I mean there's been a lot of great dialog around that quite frankly between owners individually, owners collectively and the various management companies and brands that service in particularly the larger institutional owners.
I personally think it's a unique and rare opportunity that we didn't have in either -- in any of the major downturns at least in my career where you kind of reacted, you came down a little bit and you kind of over time build things back up. We're literally starting many hotels from a true zero-based budget and that gives us a really rare and unique opportunity to really rethink the business model, and we're doing it. So how far that goes and what the right answer is, I think it's too soon to tell. But there is active and ongoing dialog between owners and operators within the operating companies themselves. And I think there are -- I think we will come out of this with a far lower cost structure than we have could have imagined if we had had a downturn like the 9/11 or a downturn like a financial crisis just because we're building that where we have the ability to look at everything from true zero-base.
David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst
Right. And if I can follow that up with the group of hotels that you're going to open first. Can you just give us a sense for what normal number of FTEs might be on average and kind of what you're thinking about in terms of opening with, in terms of FTEs, just to put some perspective around it?
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
I think it's a little too soon to talk about that. Our large -- our largest hotels carry a ratio of around half an FTE per room, roughly in that range, maybe a little more than that. But the issue is going to be in the larger hotels is do you have consistent group demand to be able to staff up the level which you can service that group and then be able to react if there is a dip of a few days or a week or 2 weeks before the next major group. And those -- that's what's going to make considerations in opening the larger group hotels for everyone. I think a tougher question, because if you need to staff for a group that's going to take 80% of your hotel, you're going to have to staff to be able to service 80% of the hotel and if you don't have another group coming in shortly thereafter, that groups or transient business or leisure driven that you can put on top of that group, then that's going to change and alter how you make that decision to open.
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Do you want to hear about the smaller hotels.
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
We said groups.
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Smaller though. So the ones we're about to open. So David, what I will say about the one group or about the open is that we obviously are looking at it from a perspective of -- we're closed right now. We have kind of to skeleton crew basically that is pretty uniform across the portfolio for those type of hotels as far as the type of personnel that is on board even when you're closed. To reopen some of those hotels, you're really not adding a whole lot initially and it's really not very sad because of the offerings being significantly reduced not having -- in most cases is not having restaurants open or very limited amount being open, you're just adding couple of FTEs basically to be able to open up those type of portfolio right now.
David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst
Got it. And if I can ask just one last detail. Regarding the failed sale, we're obviously putting the EBITDA back into the model, is there any capex that we should be contemplating along with that or is the math as simple as I lay out?
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
No, there is really no near-term capex. We actually did some renovations of those hotels very recently. So the ones that were frankly a little bit longer and the two that needed that money that really has happened over the last couple of years. So we're in very good shape there. I wish I could tell you just add the EBITDA back that we had in '19 for those properties, so that's probably not on the cards for some period of time.
David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst
Probably not the right answer. Okay, thank you very much, I appreciate the answers. Good luck.
Operator
Our next question comes from Matt Boone with B Riley, FBR.
Matt Boone -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
Hey, guys. Good afternoon. This is Matt on for Brian, I just wanted to turn to the cost savings side of things and I apologize if I missed this, but from the initiatives that you've implemented thus far, I guess what areas would you consider the changes or adjustments to be areas that could be more permanent going forward?
Atish Shah -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Matt. I think certainly as we've seen in other downturns, the level and number of fixed staffing meaning management personnel on property -- and the levels of staffing that you have, I think we'll see a similar number of levels of management probably come out as we reopen and reramp. I think that's certainly one area.
Certainly I think opportunity to become more efficient throughout the hotel whether that's through providing housekeeping only on checkout whether that's through really getting to the point where mobile keys or keyless check-in checkout are a lot key less -- key passing the desk into check-in checkout. I think both -- those are really large initiatives that have -- we've been working toward for some time that I think we'll have some legs as we go through this. I think certainly shortening and moving food and beverage offerings to more limited offerings and offerings that are much more expedient to be able to prepare in a style that may be available for grab and go. I think those are the primary areas where I think you'll see both cost saving initially and things that have potential to stay in the operating model longer term.
Matt Boone -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
Okay. And is there anything else that you're considering implementing or do you believe that everything that's been put in place will be enough to weather any additional near term headwinds?
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Well, I mean, obviously, as you know, 31 of our 39 hotels are closed. So what we've implemented is they're closed. So but we certainly hope we're not going to continue to implement that for the entire portfolio and we'll will look to obviously add the services that are needed and expenses that are needed. I think Barry has talked through a few of those categories that's and I'd co-heartedly agree with his comments about -- is a great opportunity to zero-based operations and to really build back those pieces that are truly necessary to run the business.
And I think that's where -- as an owner of the type of hotels that we own, there is a great opportunity to create a better more efficient model to some extent than some on the hotels we're previously operating under. On the flip side of that. I think the hotels that we own are still enormously attractive for all kind of different demands, including corporate transient and leisure demands that's even if you were scaling down some short-term operations and amenities, so there will still be very attractive to stay out in comparison, which maybe some of the more cookie cutter type of hotels.
Matt Boone -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
Got it. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Bill Crow with Raymond James.
Bill Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Hey, afternoon guys. Marcel, I know you're laughing about just adding back '19 EBITDA, but it does bring up a question and largely because we heard kind of some surprising answer to that question earlier today, but when do you think we get back to '19 levels?
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Well, Bill it's...
Bill Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
I know if you knew the answer, I'm saying, but you got to manage your business for some sort of -- and scheme, right?
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, absolutely. I mean obviously the way that we're managing our business right now is both looking at short-term and longer-term views of how we get back to those type of performances. And so our view of it is, you got obviously operated with a strategy, hope is not a strategy, so it's not -- we're not sitting here saying we hope we will be back at these levels at this time. It certainly is going to take a -- in our mind, it is not a 12 months situation clearly. I mean it is something that's going to take a couple of years to work its way out.
And when you here and I've I didn't personally hear some of the things that you may have heard earlier today. But what I will say is that you've heard a lot of people talking about know, is it '22, is it '23, kind of, in that that time frame and what we're seeing right now, I -- in many ways it's flipping to say your guess is as good as mine, because our guest should be a little bit better. But there is obviously a lot of variables that are going to go into how quickly things come back and how quickly things rebound. But that is probably the closest that we can say that later in '22, into '23 is probably a more realistic way of looking at things.
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
Yes, the only other thing I would add is just if you think about top line and RevPAR versus profitability and some of the things we're talking about in terms of operating costs and maybe margin potential even at lower levels of RevPAR might translate into -- even if you don't get to exactly the same level of RevPAR in a couple of years maybe you can do better on the profitability standpoint, because we've got a different operating model than in the past.
The other pieces would be obviously the supply growth which -- it's hard to envision a lot of supply growth beyond what is currently under construction actually opening up whenever that happens. But beyond that, I think you're going to have a lengthy period with not a lot of new supply growth. So those are some other factors to think about as you think kind of how this industry might look in a couple of years.
Bill Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Yes. No, I appreciate that very much. And one other question. At what point do we have to get to before you can start to really push cancellation fees, squarely you can't push any of that now. But if we're reopened as a country by the end of the year but group still don't want to travel. So as you look at ahead your pace in 2021, do you start to really push cancellation fees at that point? Is that legitimate or is that just lead to backlash PR nightmares and things like that?
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Well, I think it's an obviously -- it's a delicate balancing act clearly and this is really something that the operators are very focused on. It is a very unique and unprecedented situation right now. So there is a lot of flexibility being shown as it relates to rebookings and those type of things. So we think that's appropriate in the current situation. I wouldn't want to say, it's not my position to right now say, hey, we're going to reinforce through a certain date or not reinforce them and then start reinforcing after a certain date. It's really going to depend very much on what the situation is and what the true likelihood of some of the rebooking -- some of the rebookings are and those type of things. So it's just a little bit too early to really make any hard and fast statements about that, I think.
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
And the operators, their focus is really on particularly the big larger operators in the brand companies on conveying this declining, safety really, really focused around that to make hotels welcoming comfortable for people in the future.
Bill Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Great. Thanks. I appreciate it.
Operator
This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Marcel Verbaas for any closing remarks.
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you all for joining the call today. It's -- as we said a number of times during this call obviously unprecedented times, it's something that's -- again I'm very proud to be part of this team, ones working extremely hard through this crisis, and we feel very good about the team, we have the portfolio, we have the relationships, we have metrics grew this and really want to thank all of you for joining us today and/or stay healthy, stay safe and we look forward to connecting with you in the months ahead.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 61 minutes
Call participants:
Lisa Ramey -- Vice President-Finance
Marcel Verbaas -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Barry Bloom -- President and Chief Operating Officer
Atish Shah -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thomas Allen -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Austin Wurschmidt -- KeyBanc -- Analyst
Michael Bellisario -- Robert W. Baird -- Analyst
Ari Klein -- BMO Capital Markets -- Analyst
Tyler Batory -- Janney Capital Markets -- Analyst
David Katz -- Jefferies -- Analyst
Matt Boone -- B Riley, FBR -- Analyst
Bill Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
