Why Outlier Hyatt Won’t Focus on Asia for Future Growth

The leaders of many of the world’s largest hotel companies have rallied in recent months around the idea the biggest rate of growth for hotels in coming years would be across Asia rather than the U.S. Data already supports the idea: There are 622,218 rooms in the U.S. development pipeline compared to 656,828 rooms in China, according to Lodging Econometrics. But Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian sees more franchise growth opportunities for his company across the U.S., Europe, and South America rather than Asia. “I would say Asia is trailing all of that by a wide margin because it's just not a very penetrable franchise market,” Hoplamazian said last week at the Goldman Sachs Travel and Leisure Conference. Hyatt isn’t writing off Asia or China. The company had a 35,000-room development pipeline in China at the end of 2020, which was larger than the 24,000-room pipeline in the U.S. In fact, Hyatt views China as a bit of a guide for how the rest of its portfolio can recover from the