Skift Take
Hotel developers that look beyond banks to alternative financing sources like high-net-worth individuals will pay more in the near-term, but a company like Hyatt may find it is worth it in executing a growth strategy.
Coronavirus tanked travel demand around the world earlier this year, and the appetite for hotel construction loans evaporated along with it. But that hasn’t stopped Hyatt from moving forward with plans to grow its Thompson Hotels brand portfolio by nearly 70 percent in the next three years.
The nine-hotel Thompson Hotels brand is on track to gain six new properties across the southeastern U.S. and Texas, Hyatt announced earlier this month. Hotels in Savannah, Georgia, and Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood are expected to open in 2021. Thompson properties in San Antonio and Dallas are slated to open this fall while one in Austin is on track to open in mid-2021. A Houston Thompson Hotel is scheduled to open in 2023.
Hyatt continues to see growth opportunities for the brand, despite the headwinds in pushing forward an entirely new-build concept amid a stark construction lending environment.
“In truth, new-build projects are, at a minimum, a three-year endurance test and more often four to five,” said David Tarr, senior vice president of development at Hyatt. “We just happened to have a robust pipeline of projects that were under construction or very advance
