U. S. cautious
perspective, but we’re still proceeding at the pace we did last year. China is trying to shift tomore of a consumer economy. We are in the consumer space and so our business is growing faster in China than the Chinese economy is growing generally. Japan, from a travel perspective, is doing great. And, a piece of that is China, too. Japan is a great destination for the Chinese. The new Chinese middle class wants to increase its experience with things outside China and inside. Q WHAT ABOUT THE U. S.? A: The U. S. consumer is very steady and reasonably strong. I think the U. S. business traveler is cautious. You put those two things together and we end up with pretty modest growth. We’ve looked at same store sales of about plus- 3% year- to- date, which is not very exciting. It could be worse. But we think that reflects what we’ve seen in GDP growth, which is 1%- ish kind of performance in the first two quarters of the year. And that really takes a toll on the way businesses spend for travel. Because if their profits are under pressure, they’re gonna be a bit more cautious about putting people on the road. Q WHY DO YOU THINK WE ARE SEEING THIS SLOWGROWTH? A: Growth is anemic. There are uncertainties to be sure. Obviously, there’s a big election uncertainty. I don’t know whether that’s driving corporate decisions actively today, but I think you look around the U. S. and you see a number of industries which are under broad pressure. Think about energy, think about finance. Both have significant pressure on profits. And they’re being a bit more cautious. And then I think you’ve got tech, which is relatively stronger and performing fairly well, but generally I think profit growth is fairly anemic. Q WHAT’S NEXT IN TERMS OF INTEGRATING THESE TWO COMPANIES? A: The two remaining places would be our hotel owners tomake sure we’re driving results for them from the get- go. And then technology. We have dozens of technology tools that are used across the company. And there’s no sense having two sets of emails or two reservation platforms or two accounting report platforms. And so there’s a lot of work to do around technology.