How Hyatt Plans to Leverage Newly Acquired Apple Leisure for Global Growth
Skift Take
Hyatt is banking on a mix of organic brand growth as well as the $2.7 billion Apple acquisition to significantly ramp up its portfolio development in the next few years. All-inclusive resorts as well as the Hyatt Place brand are especially going to be the ones to watch.
Early Check-In
Editor’s Note: Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill brings readers exclusive reporting and insights into hotel deals and development, and how those trends are making an impact across the travel industry.Earnings season is just around the corner for hotels, and the publicly traded companies are keeping most growth figures quiet until they report.
But Hyatt is already signaling how it will use a recent acquisition on top of organic growth of its historic brands to beef up its portfolio.
The Chicago-based company’s $2.7 billion acquisition of Apple Leisure Group, which closed in November, doubled Hyatt’s resort portfolio and expanded its European footprint by 60 percent. The push into Europe seemed out of step with the industry at the time of its announcement last year, as it arrived at the time competitors like Hilton were touting Asia as their growth target. But Hyatt’s focus on Europe as well as a planned Americas expansion link up with industry expectations both regions will end up recovering faster over the next year.
“What we have now is the ability to get into a marketplace that has predominantly been led by local and regional brands,” Jim Chu, Hyatt’s executive vice president of global franchising and development, said specifically of Spain in an interview with Skift. “We can come in and have an immediate quality of resort experience getting into one of the largest markets [and] catering towards a customer that already looks similar to ours from a demographic perspective.”
