These forward looking statements speak as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.
Our June and July RevPAR results exceeded 2019 levels by approximately 5% and 15%, respectively.
For almost 1.5 years, we've maintained significant RevPAR index share gains against the competition as compared to 2019.
Our strategic investments in the extended stay segment allowed us to quadruple the size of the portfolio over the past five years to reach 460 domestic units with a domestic pipeline of over 300 hotels.
The Comfort portfolio grew its domestic unit count by 2.5% in the second quarter year over year and recently celebrated the highest number of openings since 2014, while achieving RevPAR index gains versus its local competitors in the second quarter.
Clarion Pointe has already experienced a fivefold increase of its portfolio since the end of 2019, ending the first half of the year with over 30 hotels open in the U.S. and more than 20 additional hotels awaiting conversion this year.
Specifically, we've increased the number of domestic upscale rooms by nearly 25% since the end of 2019, driven by impressive growth of both Cambria and the Ascend Hotel Collection.
As a matter of fact, our group travel bookings reached 90% of our 2019 levels in the first half of the year with key segments, strongly rebounding and lead volumes steadily rising close to 2019 levels.
Our extended stay segment, a significant growth engine for the company, expanded by over 45 hotels in the second quarter year over year and now represents over 10% of our total domestic rooms.
For the second quarter, as compared to 2019, WoodSpring Suites reported 16% RevPAR growth.
And the brand's pipeline continues to expand, reaching 155 domestic hotels.
Our suburban extended stay portfolio expanded to nearly 70 domestic hotels open, representing 15% unit growth year over year.
At the same time, our MainStay Suites, mid scale extended stay brand, continued to capture nearly 14 percentage points in RevPAR index gains versus its local competitors as compared to 2019 and the brand's portfolio of over 90 domestic hotels open experienced 27% year over year unit growth.
In the first half of the year, the Comfort portfolio opened the highest number of the brand's conversion hotels in the past decade, while increasing domestic new construction agreements by 20% year over year.
Our upscale portfolio achieved impressive year over year growth in the second quarter, where we increased our domestic room count by 24%, marking a record for domestic openings in the first half of the year for the company, including 22 Penn National Gaming properties.
The brand grew its domestic room count by 28% year over year and expanded to nearly 390 hotels open around the globe.
In addition, Ascend Hotels outperformed the upscale segment RevPAR change by 26 percentage points for the quarter as compared to 2019.
Our upscale Cambria Hotels brand continues its positive momentum, growing its portfolio size by 14% to 58 units with 17 projects under active construction at the end of June and approximately 10 additional hotels planned to open this year.
In the first half of the year, we awarded 200 new domestic franchise agreements, a 32% increase over the same period of 2020.
Likewise, demand for our conversion brands throughout the first half of the year has increased by over 40% year over year.
Our guests are increasingly engaging with our travel partners and continuing to benefit with additional travel options, while our more than 49 million Choice Privileges members have the opportunity to earn and redeem points at our travel partners properties by booking their stays directly on choicehotels.com.
For second quarter 2021 as compared to the same period of 2019, total revenues, excluding marketing and reservation system fees, were $142.4 million.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 9% to $111.8 million, driven by improving RevPAR performance and continued cost discipline.
Our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 79%, an 8% increase.
And as a result, our adjusted earnings per share were $1.22 for the second quarter, a 3% increase versus the same period of 2019.
The company's domestic effective royalty rate once again exceeded 5% for the second consecutive quarter, growing seven basis points for the second quarter 2021 compared to the same period of 2020, a reflection of the continued strengthening of the value proposition we provide to our franchise owners.
Our domestic system wide RevPAR outperformed the overall industry by 20 percentage points for the second quarter, declining only 1% from 2019, while occupancy increased by 20 basis points as compared to the same quarter of 2019.
We are proud to report that our June RevPAR results exceeded 2019 levels by approximately 5%, driven by a nearly 3% increase in average daily rate and a two percentage point increase in occupancy.
Our July performance was significantly stronger with RevPAR growth of approximately 15%, driven by occupancy levels of 70% and an average daily rate increase of 10% versus 2019 levels.
Specifically, when compared to second quarter 2019, our upscale portfolio increased its RevPAR index relative to its local competitive set and outperformed the industry's RevPAR change by nearly 13 percentage points.
Our extended-stay portfolio grew RevPAR by 10% in the second quarter year over year, driven by occupancy levels of 82% and a 2% increase in average daily rate.
The segment outperformed the industry's RevPAR change by more than 31 percentage points.
Our WoodSpring brand reported 16% RevPAR growth, reaching an average occupancy rate of nearly 86% and experiencing a nearly 6% increase in average daily rate.
Ascend Hotels grew June RevPAR by nearly 5%, driven by an over 12% average daily rate increase and achieved RevPAR index gains of 11 percentage points against their local competitors, while our Cambria Hotels drove the brand's RevPAR share gains versus their local competitors to 14 percentage points.
Quality, our largest brand in the portfolio, recorded nearly 2% RevPAR growth driven mainly by a 1.2% increase in average daily rate.
Across our more revenue intense brands in the upscale, extended-stay and mid scale segments, we observed stronger unit growth, increasing the number of hotels and rooms by 2.5% and 3.1% year over year, respectively, and increasing the growth rate from the first quarter of 2021.
Furthermore, we continue to expect the unit growth of the more revenue intense segments to accelerate versus 2020 and range between 2% and 3%.
In fact, development activity for our extended-stay and upscale domestic franchise contracts throughout the first half of the year exceeded 2019 levels by nearly 60% and 14%, respectively.
Nearly 40% of total domestic franchise agreements awarded in the second quarter were for new construction contracts, which increased by over 20% in the second quarter year over year.
At the end of second quarter 2021, the company had approximately $908 million in cash and available borrowing capacity through its revolving credit facility.
We are also pleased to report cash flow from operations of $102.3 million for the second quarter of 2021, a 28% increase versus second quarter 2019.
In June and July 2021, we returned over $14 million back to our shareholders in the form of cash dividends and repurchases of our common stock.

Summary:
These forward looking statements speak as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.
And as a result, our adjusted earnings per share were $1.22 for the second quarter, a 3% increase versus the same period of 2019.