One of the biggest trends to emerge in the post-pandemic world has been the growth of leisure travel, with a particular focus on the luxury and lifestyle offering.
Whatever their budget, guests want differentiation from their travel experiences and the best hotel brands are rapidly adapting to this new paradigm.
Hospitality Investor recently caught up with Felicity Black-Roberts, Senior Vice President, Development, EAME at Hyatt, to discuss the company’s approach.
Hospitality Investor: How has Hyatt’s development strategy evolved over the last couple of years, especially in response to market trends and shifts in consumer behaviour?
Felicity Black-Roberts: Hyatt is undergoing a rapid transformation, evolving far beyond a business-focused hotel chain. Since 2017, we’ve doubled our luxury room count, tripled our resort offerings, and increased our lifestyle rooms fivefold.
We’re not just expanding our offerings across a broad spectrum: we’re excelling at the top of each segment, while pursuing innovative growth through a focused, asset-light strategy.
That is why our current development strategy goes beyond organic deals to include portfolio integrations and partnerships with a variety of operators. For example, the recent acquisition of Standard International and its iconic hotel brands has solidified our position as the leader in the industry’s premier lifestyle space. Similarly, the acquisition of the German lifestyle brand me and all hotels has brought with it a healthy pipeline to Hyatt’s portfolio and a conversion-friendly brand ready for rapid expansion across Europe and beyond.
In response to the growing consumer demand, we have significantly expanded our global resort offering and are now the world’s largest operator of luxury-branded rooms in resort locations, with a portfolio spanning 125 properties with almost 43,000 rooms in 12 countries. In this space, we’ve just announced a planned partnership with Spain’s Grupo Piñero, which is expected to expand our all-inclusive room portfolio by approximately 30 per cent.
Hospitality Investor: Ground-up developments are challenging at the moment. How is Hyatt trying to overcome this?
Felicity Black-Roberts: It’s no secret that the construction scene has proved challenging across the sector, with investors under increasing pressure to look for the right and most reliable long-term partners. Moreover, the availability of sites for new builds in the most popular tourist destinations, where we’re eager to plant more flags, is extremely limited.
Part of our approach to address these challenges has involved a diversified growth strategy that includes a mix of conversions and new builds, both managed and franchised. We’ve also embraced soft brands, which offer greater flexibility to our partners. Soft brands work particularly well for conversions of properties in unique locations, or those with distinctive architecture or historical significance, allowing their features to shine without being constrained by brand standards.
Hospitality Investor: Are you looking at converting offices or retail spaces into hotels?
Felicity Black-Roberts: Converting offices and retail spaces into hotels is certainly an approach that Hyatt has successfully employed in the past, and one that is embedded into our strategy going forward as we continue expanding across the region. A great example is Hyatt Place London City East, which was transformed from an office building into the hotel it is today – a project that required both flexibility in design and a tailored approach.
Hospitality Investor: What are Hyatt’s focus areas for growth in the Europe Africa and Middle East (EAME) region over the next 3-5 years?
Felicity Black-Roberts: Rather than focusing on the geographic areas where we plan to grow, I think it’s more insightful to discuss the rationale behind that strategy. Up until recently, Hyatt has experienced remarkable growth in EAME in destinations favoured by our traditional clients from outside the region.
Our new approach is twofold: we’ll continue expanding in those iconic destinations, while also targeting locations popular with regional travellers. This will help keep us top of mind when they travel abroad.
In line with this, we’re already capitalizing on the trend of expanding into secondary cities, with a strong pipeline of new properties including Hyatt House in Leeds, Hyatt Place in Rouen, and the luxury lifestyle Thompson brand in Seville, complementing our established presence in secondary cities across the region, including Manchester, Bordeaux, and Krakow, to name a few.
Elsewhere, while the pandemic bought business travel to a grinding halt, we have seen a strong rebound in demand for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) across EAME. With this, there is greater focus by companies on the creative ways in which they can deliver innovative and quality events. As a result, we are focused on our ability to deliver unique and inspiring venues– for example, with our Unique Venues; a growing collection of story-worthy MICE spaces across participating hotels in EAME.
Hospitality Investor: How has your development team evolved and what skill sets are now most valuable for expansion in this market?
Felicity Black-Roberts: The EAME region has been a key driver of Hyatt’s global expansion in recent years, now boasting a portfolio of over 200 hotels and 45,000 rooms across 41 countries and 17 brands.
The development team behind this success, now under my leadership, has done extraordinary work, earning recognition across the industry.
As we embrace a new strategy focused on growing not only in traditional destinations but also in secondary cities, we need more specialists with expertise in specific geographic areas. That’s why we’re bringing in fresh talent to fill new roles with more segmented territorial responsibilities.
Our team has grown from just two people to more than ten, each dedicated to staying ahead of the latest consumer trends. I’m particularly proud that our team is richly diverse, with half of its members being women in senior leadership roles – something still uncommon in our industry. This is a significant achievement, one that was almost unheard of until recently, and it serves as both a source of inspiration and a competitive advantage.
Hospitality Investor: How does Hyatt differentiate itself in a competitive market, especially with numerous hotel brands expanding aggressively?
Felicity Black-Roberts: I believe the owners’ community sees Hyatt as a leader in delivering top-tier experiences across every segment. Whether a project targets business travelers, lifestyle enthusiasts, luxury seekers, or resort-goers, partnering with us offers a clear advantage in terms of service perception and guest satisfaction.
Additionally, our brands are far less saturated in key destinations than those of our competitors, providing significant room for growth without the difficulties of internal competition among our hotels.
We also boast the fastest-growing loyalty program in the industry, recently surpassing 51 million members, with the best member-to-hotel ratio. This, combined with our powerful commercial engine, allows owners to tap into highly attractive feeder markets that they might not traditionally access.
Hyatt is also a purpose-driven company, dedicated to caring for all our stakeholders so they can be their best, and that includes our valued owners and operators. We pride ourselves on actively listening to their feedback and taking action to support our shared goal of growth and improved performance.
