Market Minute: Weekend Spotlight: Travel + Leisure (TNL) Holding Strong Despite Consumer Pinch

Travel + Leisure’s (TNL) President & CEO, Mike Brown, seems confident that Americans won’t give up traveling even as fears of recession grow and consumer wallets are squeezed. “We’ve seen leisure travel remain strong throughout 1Q,” with demand peaking in March, the end of the quarter.

Travel + Leisure has been around under a variety of names since 1966, according to the company’s website timeline. It spun off Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (WH) in 2018. It also has a namesake magazine, where it runs the World’s Best Awards and Summit with categories including hotels, cities, islands, transportation, and more. While the stock is down 13% year-to-date and down 5% over the last year, it’s made a rebound since its earnings report.

The company has been busy since the pandemic: in 2021 it launched Travel + Leisure GO, a “subscription travel club” that offers “exclusive savings” on hotels, along with “preferred pricing” on car rentals, activities, and more. It even offers a “personal AI trip planner” to tailor experiences for users. It appears to be free to sign up. However, TNL also offers the “Travel + Leisure Club,” which is a paid subscription.

In 2023 it announced “Sports Illustrated Resorts,” a plan to build a network of future sports-themed resorts. In 2024, it acquired Accor Vacation Club to expand in Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia.

Travel + Leisure is split into two segments: Vacation Ownership and Travel & Membership. Vacation Ownership claims 800K timeshare owners across 270+ resorts worldwide, including locations in Margaritaville.

Timeshares have a bit of a bad reputation for hidden or unexpected fees, as well as outright scams, with pages on how to avoid them on ARDA-ROC, a nonprofit that advocates for the industry and owners. ARDA-ROC’s President & CEO, Jason Gamel, emphasizes that timeshares are not a “real estate investment, but a commitment to vacationing.” Timeshares can work in a variety of ways, but generally the principle is owning a fraction of a property. People can buy the rights to stay at a property at a particular time, or a particular length of time.

Or, like with Travel + Leisure, users buy points to redeem at a variety of locations the company owns, which allows for more flexibility in travel than a standard timeshare. This makes it feel more like prepaying for a vacation than deciding to buy a particular property. Brown emphasizes that their model is “branded hospitality,” not the old timeshare standard.

Some people may ask if timeshares, given the lingering bad reputation and higher costs, even work anymore in the sharing economy popularized by Airbnb (ABNB) and similar ventures. Of course, ABNB has faced customer complaints of, among other things, scam listings, excessive cleaning fees, and problems with hosts. They may also serve a different segment of the consumer population – after all, the hotel business remains strong.

TNL’s latest earnings report released on April 23, 1Q25, was mixed. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.11 missed Street estimates, but revenue of $934 million beat, with most of the money coming from its Vacation Ownership segment. Travel & Membership revenue actually fell 7%, with TNL citing “lower exchange transactions.” It also backed its 2025 guidance – a thing rarer by the day as companies grapple with tariffs. Volume per guest grew 6% year-over-year to $3,212 in Vacation Ownership, while revenue per transaction grew 1% to $353 in Travel & Membership.

The main difference TNL has noticed so far, Brown says, is a reduction in cross-border travel and “booking windows are slightly closer” – meaning the time between the trip being booked and the trip taking place. “80% of our owners have paid for their ownership fully,” he notes, meaning they don’t have to worry about affording the trip as wallets are squeezed.

Travel + Leisure is a well-established brand and appears to be running its own ecosystem: its own magazine and website with promotions, its own subscriptions, its own resorts. If investors are encouraged by this holistic offering, they may be interested in the stock. Even amidst the turmoil, Brown expects summer travel to remain strong, even if consumers vacation a little closer to home.