If you look at US hotel companies by the number of properties, Hyatt isn’t anywhere near the top of the list. People are way more likely to find a Wyndham, Marriott, Hilton, or IHG hotel before they’ll ever find a Hyatt. Not everything is measured by numbers and Hyatt tends to get extra attention because their hotel quality, from the Park Hyatts to Hyatt Places, is generally higher than other brands.
Quality over quantity isn’t going to get more guests. You need to have hotels where people travel, which is Hyatt’s Achilles heel. That’s why I was excited to read that Hyatt is expanding in the Americas and adding 45 new hotels in 2022 and 2023 across many of its existing brands.
That’s right. Forty-five.
For Hyatt, that’s a decent chunk of hotels and will increase the portfolio size by 5%. They’re moving into 11 new markets and adding hotels to 19 others.
It still doesn’t move the brand into the upper tier. A number of these new properties are all-inclusive resorts in Mexico, which doesn’t do much to get away from being the brand where you go for a single stay to becoming someone’s consistent hotel chain.
For Marriott or Hilton, 45 properties are a rounding error. The fact that Hyatt adding that number of properties is major news shows that it’s still a secondary player.
I’m not saying that I don’t like staying at Hyatt Hotels. Our visits (well, except this one) have been above average and several have been much better than expected. They have some truly unique properties that I’m looking forward to visiting. It’s just I’d like to stay with them more but can’t because they’re not always where I’m going. No matter how nice it is, I’m not going to drive an extra 30 minutes to stay at a Hyatt Place instead of a Residence Inn or Holiday Inn Express.
It seems like Hyatt’s trying to go for the destination vacation and not for the everyday stay. Their properties will need to be substantially better than the competition to pry people away from other chains they’re accustomed to visiting.
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