DiamondRock Hospitality Company (NYSE:DRH) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call August 2, 2024 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Briony Quinn - CFO
Jeff Donnelly - CEO
Justin Leonard - President and COO
Conference Call Participants
Austin Wurschmidt - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Patrick Scholes - Truist
Dori Kesten - Wells Fargo Securities
Smedes Rose - Citi
Duane Pfennigwerth - Evercore ISI
Michael Bellisario - Baird
Dany Asad - Bank of America
Chris Woronka - Deutsche Bank
Chris Darling - Green Street
William Crow - Raymond James
Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to DiamondRock Hospitality Company Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Briony Quinn, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Briony Quinn
Thank you, Justin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me on the call today is Jeff Donnelly, our Chief Executive Officer; and Justin Leonard, our President and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that many of our comments today are not historical facts and are considered to be forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. As described in our filings with the SEC, these statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause future results to differ materially from what we discuss today.
In addition, on today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of this information to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings press release. We were pleased with our second quarter results, which exceeded our expectations going into the quarter. Comparable RevPAR grew 2.2% over last year, which was 260 basis points higher than the growth that we saw in the first quarter and exceeded the 100 basis point to 150 basis point of sequential acceleration we expected.
Total RevPAR increased 4.5%, also an acceleration from the 2.4% total RevPAR growth in the first quarter. The 230 basis point gap between total RevPAR growth and room RevPAR growth was the result of an intentional mix shift toward Group business that drove strong out-of-room spend.
The strategy has worked. Group revenue increased 7.2% over last year and banquet catering and AV revenue increased over 20%. The strong revenue growth was driven by both our resort and urban hotels. Comparable RevPAR at our resorts was 1.9% higher than last year, with total RevPAR 2.7% higher.