Hilton Teases a Long-Stay Apartment Hotel Brand to Debut Soon

25.08.2023 - 13:42 / skift.com / Sean Oneill / Chris Nassetta / Hilton Worldwide / Long

Hilton Worldwide executives teased on Wednesday that they expect to announce a new apartment hotel brand within the next couple of months. The move will come as the operator continues to expand its portfolio beyond premium and luxury hotel brands, such as Waldorf Astoria and Conrad.

“The product that we’re developing… we’ve done 99 percent of the work,” said Chris Nassetta, president and CEO, in a call with analysts. “It’s almost a hybrid. It’s like an apartment efficiency meets hotel.”

The new brand will be all new construction rather than conversions, at least at first.

“So you’re talking about average length of stay of probably 20 to 30 days on average versus most of the core extended-stay brands, which are like the 5 to 10 range,” Nassetta said.

This long-stay hotel would represent Hilton’s 20th brand.

“This is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hotels over time,” Nassetta said. “This is not like we’re going to do 50 or 100 of these. You’ll wake up over time in 10 years, and it will be like Home2 [is today].”

The move comes as more activity happens in the extended-stay and long-stay segments because of a lack of U.S. supply. Earlier this month, Hyatt announced the debut of a brand, Hyatt Studios, as its first entry in the segment. Since October, Wyndham launched ECHO Suites by Wyndham, and BWH launched @Home by Best Western. Category leader Extended Stay America has added brands in the past couple of years.

“While a lot of people are doing things in this arena, we’ve proven we have launched brands pretty well that get to scale and build a network effect,” Nassetta said. “We’ve done that as well or better than anybody.”

The comments came during a first-quarter earnings report where the McLean, Virginia-based company continued to see a strong hunger for travel through the end of 2022 thanks to a post-pandemic travel boom — particularly from domestic and outbound U.S. travelers.

Hilton executives believe that the way people work has permanently changed with hybrid options encouraging changed travel behaviors. (For context, Skift noted this as a megatrend this year: “Blended Travel Comes of Age.”)

“There are so many workforce housing needs that are just unmet with this kind of product for somebody who needs to be somewhere 30, 60, 90, 120 days,” Nassetta said. “It’s not competitive with what we’re doing with Home2 and certainly not competitive with Homewood because it’s serving a totally different need [than our other brands], mostly in totally different markets, … for a different demand base, in different types of locations.”

Earlier this year, Hilton debuted Spark by Hilton, a premium economy brand. Nassetta gave some color on how that brand is stealing share so far. He said that of the roughly