In the first quarter of 2021, we once again delivered results that significantly outperformed the industry, our chain scale segments and local competition, and we expanded our adjusted EBITDA margins to 69%.
Our domestic systemwide year-over-year RevPAR change surpassed the industry by 23 percentage points, declining 4.4% and 18.7% as compared to the same quarters of both 2020 and 2019 respectively.
These results have helped us increase RevPAR index versus our local competitors by over 6 percentage points in the first quarter as compared to 2019.
For the first quarter we awarded nearly 90 new domestic franchise agreements and over 50% increase over the same period of 2020.
Of the total new domestic agreements, over 80% were for conversion hotels.
In fact, in April, we met with over 25 developers and toward the new model room for this exciting brand and interest is very high.
And we remain focused on growing our strategic conversion brands specifically, Clarion Pointe, a relatively new brand extension to the Clarion brand has experienced a five-fold increase of its portfolio and the Ascend Hotel Collection has increased the number of its domestic rooms by over 25% since the end of 2019.
We are also pleased to see that our first quarter experienced over 400 basis points weekday occupancy index share gains as compared to 2019.
The acquisition of the WoodSpring Suites brand in 2018 and our strategic investments in the Extended Stay segment, allowed us to nearly quadruple the size of the portfolio over the past five years, with the segment now representing 10% of our total domestic rooms.
In the first quarter the Extended Stay segment rapidly expanded by 44 units year-over-year from the first quarter of 2020 and now stands at nearly 455 domestic hotels with a domestic pipeline of 310 hotels.
For the first quarter as compared to 2019, WoodSpring reported over 3% RevPAR growth, driven by a more than 4% increase in average daily rate and an average occupancy rate of 74%, a truly remarkable achievement.
The brand's pipeline continues to expand year-over-year and reached nearly 150 domestic hotels at the end of March 2021.
Our Suburban Extended Stay brand experienced 10% year-over-year domestic unit and pipeline growth.
At the same time our MainStay Suites mid-scale extended stay brand captured over 13 percentage points in RevPAR index gains versus its local competitors as compared to 2019.
The brand's portfolio expanded to over 90 domestic hotels open a 26% increase year-over-year.
Our efforts to transform the brand are paying off, specifically the Comfort Family achieved RevPAR index gains versus its local competitors of nearly 10 percentage points and a RevPAR change that was nearly 11 percentage points more favorable than the upper mid-scale chain scale in the first quarter as compared to 2019.
The Comfort brand family reached over 260 hotels in its domestic pipeline, over one quarter of which are hotels awaiting conversions, which we believe will fuel the brand's growth in the near term.
And finally, Clarion Pointe, ended the first quarter by achieving a milestone of the 30th hotel opened in the United States and more than 20 additional hotels awaiting conversion in the near term.
Our upscale portfolio achieved impressive year-over-year growth in the first quarter, where we increased our domestic upscale room count by 22% and marked the highest number of openings in a given quarter, matching the company's all-time record.
The brand grew its domestic room count by nearly 26% year-over-year and expanded to nearly 380 hotels open around the globe.
The brand outperformed the upscale segment RevPAR change by 19 percentage points.
It achieved RevPAR index gains of 12 percentage points against its local competitors and it recorded average daily rate index gains of 11 percentage points.
Our upscale Cambria Hotels brand continues its positive momentum, growing its portfolio size by 14% to 57 units with 18 projects under active construction at the end of March.
Consumer confidence in Cambria Hotels drove the brand RevPAR share gains versus its local competitors to 16 percentage points in the first quarter as compared to 2019.
In the first quarter, we further expanded our attractive upscale platform and successfully on-boarded 22 Penn National Gaming Casino resort properties, representing nearly 7,000 rooms joining our Ascend Hotel Collection.
This strategic agreement will offer our more than 48 million Choice Privileges members the opportunity to earn and redeem points at these Penn properties by booking their stays directly on choicehotels.com.
Taking a closer look at our results for the first quarter 2021, total revenues excluding marketing and reservation system fees were $91.4 million.
Adjusted EBITDA totaled $63.1 million driven by improving RevPAR performance and our ability to realize adjusted SG&A savings of 20% and our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 69%, a 330 basis point increase year-over-year.
As a result, our adjusted earnings per share were $0.57 for the first quarter.
Our domestic systemwide RevPAR outperformed the overall industry by 23 percentage points for the first quarter, declining 18.7% from 2019, compared to 2020, our first quarter 2021 RevPAR declined only 4.4%.
At the same time, our first quarter results exceeded the primary chain scale segments in which we compete as reported by STR, by over 8 percentage points versus 2019.
In fact, starting in mid-March, we've experienced our highest occupancy levels since the start of the pandemic, with systemwide occupancy rates exceeding 70% on numerous days.
Our April performance was significantly stronger with a RevPAR decline of approximately 4% and an occupancy rate increase of 80 basis points versus 2019 levels.
Specifically when compared to first quarter 2019, our upscale portfolio increased its RevPAR index relative to its local competitive set by 14 percentage points.
Our extended stay portfolio outperformed the industry's RevPAR change by an impressive 38 percentage points and grew versus its local competitive set by 10 percentage points.
And finally the RevPAR change for our mid-scale and upper mid-scale portfolio exceeded these segments by 9 percentage points.
In fact, we were able to increase our overall RevPAR index against local competitors by over 6 percentage points, notably through our franchisees' ability to maintain rate integrity.
More specifically, our average daily rate improved from the prior quarter and our average daily rate index increased 3.7 percentage points as compared to 2019.
At the same time, we continue to grow the overall size of our franchise system and open the highest number of hotels in any first quarter in the past 10 years.
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 by 2.4% year-over-year and improving the growth from fourth quarter 2020.
Furthermore, we expect the unit growth of the more revenue intense segments to accelerate versus 2021 and range between 2% and 3%.
Specifically, we saw an increase in demand for our conversion brands with domestic conversion contracts up 76% year-over-year.
The company's domestic effective royalty rate exceeded 5% for the first time ever in a quarter and increased 7 basis points year-over-year for the first quarter compared to the prior year.
At the end of first quarter 2021, the company had approximately $823 million in cash and available borrowing capacity through its revolving credit facility, even though our cash generation tends to be weaker in the first quarter, due to the seasonality of our business and other cash outlays.
While we are not providing formal guidance today, we currently expect RevPAR change for the remainder of the year to be stronger than first quarter 2021 results versus both 2020 and 2019.

Summary:
As a result, our adjusted earnings per share were $0.57 for the first quarter.
While we are not providing formal guidance today, we currently expect RevPAR change for the remainder of the year to be stronger than first quarter 2021 results versus both 2020 and 2019.