Hyatt to Add Hotels in Markets That Feed Its All-Inclusive Resorts

25.08.2023 - 14:43 / skift.com / Mark Hoplamazian / Sean Oneill / Hyatt Hotels

Hyatt just lapped the one-year anniversary of acquiring the all-inclusive resort company Apple Leisure Group in a $2.7 billion deal. The Chicago, Illinois-based hotel group is now looking to expand its hotel presence in European cities that could help feed its all-inclusives, according to comments executives made as they reported its earnings.

Hyatt announced last month that it had cut a deal with Lindner Hotels, a German family-owned developer, to bring into its portfolio 30 of the Lindner hotels and resorts across 15 cities in Germany and in Central and Eastern Europe. They’ll add most of them to the JdV by Hyatt brand, and most of the 5,500 rooms will join Hyatt by year-end.

On Thursday, Hyatt’s executives said the move was significant in that it would help boost the cross-selling of its all-inclusives in Greece, Spain, and Bulgaria. The idea is that while guests stay at those hotels and through post-trip emails, Hyatt would have the opportunity to pitch their all-inclusive properties to them as a great spot for their next vacations.

“It’s a very important network move because Germany is the number-one feeder market for the Balearic Islands and the number-two feeder market for the Canary Islands, where we have significant all-inclusive resort presence,” said president and CEO Mark Hoplamazian.

As context, TUI Group and other European tour operators have largely had a lock on the giant all-inclusive market in Europe. So Hyatt thinks its land grab will help it start stealing share. If guests join its loyalty program, the company can then do more marketing, helping to promote future bookings at its all-inclusive resorts as well as its traditional hotels.

“So there’s an intentionality to what we’re trying to do,” Hoplamazian said. “It’s not just a representation play for Germany and for Europe. It’s also to extend and bring millions of additional customers into the world of Hyatt and expose them to now our much bigger resort portfolio in Europe.”

Hyatt plans to seek similar deals to the Lindner one.

“Some of the people at ALG [Apple Leisure Group] who have decades-long relationships with families in Europe that have portfolios,” Hoplamazian said. “So we feel very, very well positioned to both understand exactly what’s going on in the marketplace… and we have a unique position from which to seek these kinds of transactions out.”

In the third quarter, the company produced $28 million in profit on $1.5 billion in revenue. It generated $252 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization — a different measure of profit.

In the quarter, the hotel group reported that its revenue per available room, a key industry metric, topped pre-pandemic levels at last. The figure rose