No growth for growth’s sake, says Hyatt chief Mark Hoplamazian

Hyatt Hotels CEO Mark Hoplamazian has not put the chain on a growth path for the sake of it.

Mark Hoplamazian, president and chief executive officer of Hyatt Hotels.

Mark Hoplamazian, president and CEO of Hyatt Hotels Corporation, has opened 59 new hotels, but the Armenian-American businessman is adamant he has not put one of the world’s largest hotel chains on a growth path for the sake of it.

The Harvard-educated Mr Hoplamazian was in Sydney and Melbourne last week meeting with the multi-billionaire owners of the Hyatt Regency Sydney hotel, Singapore’s Kum family. Hyatt Hotels recently snared the management rights to the Kum family’s flagship hotel from the Marriott-owned Starwood chain, which had long operated the 900-room Sussex Street property — Australia’s largest.

“We have for a long time focused on deliberate growth. We have never aspired to be the biggest hotel company. Size is not what we are aspiring to,” said Mr Hoplamazian, who runs more than 700 hotels around the world.

“It is deliberate and purposeful growth, more than big growth,’’ he said, adding that further Hyatts would be added in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

Nevertheless, Mr Hoplamazian revealed he had spent time with Michael Kum and his daughter Jocelyn in Australia and pointed out that Hyatt had more opportunities with the Kums around the world. “I met them years ago in Singapore and maintained a rapport with them, and we have other opportunities with them, which I will be discussing with them,” he said.

Mr Kum said he owned 14 profitable hotels in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe. “By the end of this year we will own 17 hotels in 11 major cities around the world. (But) I will continue to invest in Sydney.”

Mr Kum said he was developing a hotel at 65 Sussex Street, Sydney, due to open later this year. “But of all the hotels, the Hyatt Regency Sydney is the jewel in the crown,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Chicago-based Mr Hoplamazian could not be drawn on his views about US President Donald Trump or the hotel industry irritant Airbnb.

He said it was too early to say if President Trump was hurting the American inbound travel industry. If there were declines in travel to the US from the key markets of Europe, Britain and Australia it could be because of the drop in value of their currencies against the surging US dollar, he said.

As for Airbnb, Mr Hoplamazian said it had so far not had a negative impact on his business. “We are at a different price point, and different length of stay. We are not overlapping with the core customer who uses Airbnb. But it is something that is relevant to our customer base and we will continue to evaluate it,” he said.

Nor would he reveal how he had managed to snare the operation of the former Starwood operated hotel in Sydney’s Sussex Street. “We live in a competitive market,” Mr Hoplamazian said.

“It was a combination of real focused attention and the practice of empathy. We practise it every day when we interact with owners and developers of hotels and pay attention to what they need.

“We were not built to be a very formulaic enterprise but rather one that is based on relationships.

“Our core principal is caring for people so they can be their best. In the course of doing it you learn a lot, I look at all these opportunities as opportunities to learn and apply it to growing Hyatt in the future,” he said.

Like Starwood, Mr Hoplamazian had sold some of the Hyatt-owned hotels and put the capital into acquiring more hotels to add to the 700-plus portfolio under his stewardship. “We have been able to maintain acquisitions and growth from those sales and we are recycling it into new properties,” he said.

As for Marriott’s recent $US14 billion acquisition of Starwood, creating the world’s biggest hotel company with more than 5700 hotels, Mr Hoplamazian saw positives out of the merger for Hyatt.

“There are many markets where the Marriott Group is heavily represented in many markets,” he said. “We have seen opportunities come out of that merger.

‘‘We have had success in attracting a lot of high-end customers who were some of Starwood’s better customers in terms of their loyalty program rating. We offered them matching status into the ‘World of Hyatt’.”