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Kevin Jacobs, our Chief Financial Officer and President, Global Development, will then review our third quarter results.
We are pleased to report another quarter of very solid results that demonstrate continued recovery and the resiliency of our business model.
Increases in vaccination rates and consumer spending, coupled with improving business activity, continued to drive solid travel demand throughout the summer and into the fall.
As global borders reopen and the travel environment recovers, we remain extremely encouraged by people's desire to travel and connect more than ever before.
In the third quarter, systemwide RevPAR grew 99% year-over-year.
Compared to 2019, RevPAR was down roughly 19%, improving 17 percentage points versus the second quarter, with systemwide rates down just 2.5% versus 2019.
Adjusted EBITDA totaled approximately $519 million, up 132% year-over-year and down 14% versus 2019.
Performance was primarily driven by strong leisure trends with leisure room nights roughly in line with 2019 level, with leisure rates exceeding 2019 levels.
Business travel continued to gain momentum with midweek occupancy and rates improving meaningfully versus the second quarter.
In the quarter, business transient room nights were roughly 75% of prior peak levels.
Group continued to lag but showed significant sequential improvement versus the second quarter, boosted by strength in social events.
For the quarter, group RevPAR was approximately 60% of 2019 levels, improving 21 percentage points from the second quarter.
Overall systemwide RevPAR versus 2019 peaked in July at 85% with rates just shy of prior peaks.
As expected, recovery slowed modestly later in the quarter due to typical seasonality and customer mix shift, but overall trends remained solid.
Both August and September RevPAR achieved roughly 80% of 2019 levels, driven by continued strength in leisure and upticks in business travel post-Labor Day as offices and schools reopen.
These trends improved modestly into October with month-to-date RevPAR at approximately 84% of 2019 levels and rates in the U.S. nearly back to prior peaks.
Roughly 40% of systemwide hotels have exceeded 2019 RevPAR levels in October month-to-date.
Additionally, bookings for all future periods are just 8% below 2019.
With loosening travel restrictions and strong nonresidential fixed investment forecast, we remain optimistic for future travel demand.
TSA reported third quarter travel numbers were nearly 80% of 2019 with demand picking up further following the announcements of the U.S. border reopening and the lift of the international travel ban for vaccinated travelers.
Additionally, studies show that nearly 70% of U.S. businesses are back on the road, up 28 points from the end of the second quarter.
With roughly 80% of our typical corporate mix coming from small- and medium-sized businesses and with the lagging recovery of larger corporate travel, we've taken the opportunity to continue our work from before COVID to further increase our focus on this segment of demand.
This demand is higher rated, the more resilient -- resilient, which has helped us recover more quickly in business transient and should drive rate compression in the future as larger corporate travel picks up.
On the group side, our position for the rest of the year remains fairly steady with forward booking sentiment improving as variant concerns taper.
Additionally, the recent reopenings of some of our large urban properties, like the New York Hilton Midtown, increased our confidence in our positioning as group recovers.
We added nearly 100 hotels and 15,000 rooms across all major regions and delivered strong net unit growth of 6.6% in the third quarter.
Conversions represented roughly 1/3 of openings.
Year-to-date, we've added more than 42,000 net rooms globally, higher than all our major branded competitors.
Our performance reflects the success of our disciplined growth strategy, the strength of our brands, network effect and commercial engines across the world.
It also illustrates our increasing confidence in a strong recovery in global tourism in the months and years to come.
During the quarter, we launched our large-scale franchise model in China, enabling independent owners to explore franchising opportunities with our Hilton Garden Inn brand with a prototype developed specifically for the Chinese market.
To date, we have signed more than 100 deals to develop Hilton Garden properties in China, strengthening our confidence in the long-term growth of our focused service brands and our ability to cater to a growing middle class.
Following our recently announced exclusive license agreement with Country Garden, we were thrilled to open our first Home2 Suites in China with plans to grow to more than 1,000 properties.
We look forward to leveraging our partnership to capture the rapidly growing demand for mid-scale hotels in China.
We also celebrated the opening of our 500th Home2 Suites following the brand's launch just 10 years ago, making it one of the fastest-growing brands in industry history and boasting the industry's largest pipeline in North America with more than 400 hotels in development.
Our luxury and lifestyle footprints also continued to expand globally with the debut of the Canopy by Hilton in Spain and the highly anticipated opening of the Mango House LXR in the Seychelles.
Marking another important milestone in its global expansion, LXR celebrated its debut in Asia Pacific with the opening of the ROKU KYOTO.
In the quarter, we signed nearly 24,000 rooms, up approximately 40% year-over-year, driven by strength in the Americas and Asia Pacific regions.
Driving our positive momentum in luxury, we announced the signing of the Conrad Los Angeles, the brand's first property in California.
The 300-room hotel is expected to open in 2022 as part of The Grand LA mixed-use development.
With approximately 404,000 rooms in development, more than half of which are under construction, we expect positive development trends to continue, driven by both new development and conversion opportunities.
For the full year, we expect net unit growth in the 5% to 5.5% range, and we continue to expect mid-single-digit growth for the next several years.
For our guests, flexibility has always been important, but the pandemic has made choice and control even more critical.
We were excited to launch several new commercial programs and loyalty extensions, including the launch of Digital Key Share, a first for a major hospitality company.
This feature allows more than one guest to have access to their room's digital key.
Additional technology enhancements have enabled our elite Honors members to begin enjoying automatic room upgrades.
Gold and Diamond members may be notified of a complementary upgrade prior to arrival, enabling guests to choose their upgraded room directly by using the Hilton Honors app.
We continue to focus on new opportunities to further engage our 123 million Honors members and are thrilled to see engagement is nearly back to 2019 levels.
In the quarter, membership grew 11% year-over-year.
Honors members accounted for 59% of occupancy with the U.S. at 66%, just two points below 2019 levels.
During the pandemic, approximately 23 million U.S. households brought home a new pet, including my own.
And like so many others, my family loves traveling with our new dog, Miller.
In the coming months, Homewood Suites will join Home2 in becoming 100% pet-friendly in the U.S. with plans for all limited service brands to be pet-friendly by the first quarter of next year.
Our guests are eager to travel with their furry little friends.
And by making that simpler, we're able to capture demand and bring new business into the system.
As the global travel environment improves, I continue to be impressed by our team members' dedication to providing exceptional experiences to our guests.
That's why I am particularly proud that, last week, we were named the number three World's Best Workplace by Fortune and Great Place to Work.
After six consecutive years of being ranked, Hilton was the only hospitality company on the list.
We truly believe that Hilton continues to be an engine of opportunity for all of our stakeholders around the world and are very optimistic for the future.
During the quarter, systemwide RevPAR grew 98.7% versus the prior year on a comparable and currency-neutral basis as the recovery continued to accelerate, driven by strong leisure demand, particularly in the U.S. and across Europe.
Performance was driven by both occupancy and rate growth.
As Chris mentioned, systemwide RevPAR was down 18.8% compared to 2019.
Adjusted EBITDA was $519 million in the third quarter, up 132% year-over-year.
Results reflect the broader recovery in travel demand.
Management and franchise fees grew 93%, driven by strong RevPAR improvement and Honors license fees.
Additionally, results were helped by continued cost control at both the corporate and property levels.
Our ownership portfolio performed better than expected in the third quarter, driven by the accelerating recovery in Europe, the Tokyo Olympics and ongoing cost controls.
For the quarter, diluted earnings per share, adjusted for special items, was $0.78.
Turning to our regional performance.
Third quarter comparable U.S. RevPAR grew 105% year-over-year and was down 14% versus 2019.
Robust leisure demand and improving business transient trends drove strong performance in July.
Trends modestly slowed later in the quarter due to seasonality.
U.S. occupancy averaged nearly 70% for the quarter with overall rate largely in line with 2019 levels.
In the Americas outside the U.S., third quarter RevPAR increased 168% year-over-year and was down 30% versus 2019.
The region benefited from easing travel restrictions and strong leisure demand over the summer period.
Canada also saw a noticeable step-up in demand in August after reopening their borders to vaccinated Americans.
In Europe, RevPAR grew 142% year-over-year and was down 35% versus 2019.
Travel demand accelerated across the region in the third quarter as vaccination rates increased and international travel restrictions loosened.
In the Middle East and Africa region, RevPAR increased 110% year-over-year and was down 29% versus 2019.
Performance benefited from strong domestic leisure demand and international inbound travel from Europe.
In the Asia Pacific region, third quarter RevPAR grew 5% year-over-year and was down 41% versus 2019.
RevPAR in China was down 25% as compared to 2019 as a rise in COVID cases led to reimposed restrictions and lockdowns across the country.
China has recovered steadily into October with occupancy nearing 60% for the month.
In the rest of the Asia Pacific region, prolonged lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand offset upside from the Tokyo Olympics.
As Chris mentioned, in the third quarter, we grew net unit 6.6%.
Our pipeline grew sequentially, totaling 404,000 rooms at the end of the quarter with 62% of pipeline rooms located outside the U.S. Development activity continues to gain momentum across the globe as the recovery progresses, a testament to the confidence owners and developers have in our strong commercial engines and industry-leading brands.
For the full year, we now expect signings to increase in the mid- to high teens range year-over-year and expect net unit growth of 5% to 5.5%.
Turning to the balance sheet.
We ended the quarter with $8.9 billion of long-term debt and $1.4 billion in total cash and cash equivalents.
We're proud of the financial flexibility we demonstrated over the past 18 months.
And looking ahead, we remain confident in our balance sheet management as we continue to progress through the recovery and move closer toward our target leverage.
We would now like to open the line for any questions you may have.
[Operator Instructions] Chad, can we have our first question, please?

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q3 adjusted earnings per share $0.78.
for three months ended september 30, 2021, system-wide comparable revpar increased 98.7%.

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