Hyatt Hotels Corp. is in “advanced” talks to acquire boutique hotel company Standard International, which operates luxury properties across the world, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
Hyatt declined to comment on the potential deal, but a company spokesperson told Hotel Dive that Hyatt remains “committed to asset-light growth through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions.”
Standard International also declined a Hotel Dive request for comment on the deal. The company’s vice president of communications said Standard International “routinely evaluate[s] potential partnerships that could expand our footprint and provide new opportunities for our teams.”
Standard International has 19 hotel and food-and-beverage properties open globally under three brands: The Standard, Bunkhouse and The Peri Hotel. If Hyatt were to strike a deal with the company, those properties would presumably come under Hyatt’s portfolio.
Portfolio growth, particularly in the luxury lifestyle segment, has been a strategic priority for Hyatt over the last several quarters — and acquisitions have been efficient means to that end.
Portfolio growth
In June 2023, Hyatt acquired the luxury hotel platform Mr & Mrs Smith and has since added more than 700 boutique and luxury hotels and villas to its portfolio through the deal. And last month, Hyatt bought the German lifestyle hotel brand Me and All, adding six hotels and furthering its growth plans across Europe.
During a first quarter earnings call in May, Hyatt President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian said the company was “actively engaged in more transactions” than in the previous year. Those transactions, he said, included “portfolio deals” and “brand acquisitions.”
A desire to gain portfolio scale has “increased [Hyatt’s] appetite for acquisitions,” Max Starkov, hospitality consultant and adjunct professor at NYU’s Tisch Center of Hospitality, told Hotel Dive.
“Hyatt is the smallest of the major hotel chains with a mere 1,350 properties. Hyatt needs to expand its footprint globally to be able to compete with the other major chains in many key destinations,” Starkov said, adding, “This cannot be done organically since it will take much, much longer.”
Loyalty play
Boosting its global footprint in desirable destinations, Starkov added, would also help Hyatt ramp up its loyalty program membership, World of Hyatt, which has some 46 million members.
Competitors Marriott International and Hilton, meanwhile, each have closer to 200 million loyalty members. And IHG Hotels & Resorts, Choice Hotels International and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts all have more loyalty members than Hyatt.
“A loyalty program is not just a point- or discount-dispensing machine, but a database of first-party membership data, which is priceless in this era of search engines,” Starkov said.
Starkov previously told Hotel Dive similar factors were driving Choice Hotels in its bid to acquire peer Wyndham, a monthslong pursuit that began in April 2023 and ended in March.
Brand acquisitions have become a popular means of growth among hotel companies. Earlier this year, Hilton acquired college town-focused lifestyle brand Graduate Hotels and Wyndham entered the upscale extended stay segment through a brand deal with Waterwalk.
