BERLIN—The decision to go ahead with the $335 million sale of Standard International to Hyatt was made as the luxury lifestyle company had reached its back office limits.
Speaking at the IHIF EMEA 2025 conference, Hyatt Hotels president and creative director, lifestyle, Amar Lalvani, who was Standard’s executive chairman at the time of the deal, said the company had outgrown its infrastructure.
He added by doing the deal, the brand, which was the parent company of Standard International and the Bunkhouse Hotels brands, can now look at further global expansion with Asian countries including China, Japan and Vietnam all currently under consideration.
Lalvani said: “We outgrew our infrastructure and needed a great partner to take Standard where we always believed it could go.
“We opened an incredible hotel The StandardX in Melbourne and it was tough. We don’t have infrastructure there and we don’t have distribution there. We opened a Standard in the Maldives, a really lovely hotel, but we don’t have the distribution in either markets that was required.
“It’s not enough just to create cool stuff, you’ve got to have a backbone and infrastructure and that’s what we needed and now we have it.”
He added while Hyatt was able to provide the infrastructure required to take the brand to the next level, it was also the continued creative freedom that Hyatt Hotels president and CEO Mark Hoplamazian granted them that convinced him that the partnership would work.
Lalvani said: “The reason we joined Hyatt is very simple; there is Mark’s leadership, the ability to think globally, to do different things as they evolve the company, the global infrastructure that they had and frankly someone who trusted us and allowed us to keep creating within this global infrastructure.”
Hoplamazian said the acquisition had allowed Hyatt to access a different type of customer while the deal made financial sense with Wall Street likely to be impressed by Hyatt’s strong financial metrics including fee generation and fee per key.
He added: “When you have compelling brands, it makes sense to buy them.”
Hoplamazian said he is looking to expand the Standard brand in Asia, where “magnificent” properties in both Bangkok and Singapore mean the brand is well known and well respected.
He added: “This is just the beginning; we’ve got a very strong team in Japan. I think Japan is obvious and it’s a no brainer, there are quite few markets in Japan, the same is true in China and Vietnam and Thailand and I could keep going.
“We are just at the beginning of something pretty expansive and that’s what Wall Street will see and understand.”
Lalvani agreed that the acquisition will help drive the brand’s global expansion, adding: “There are owners who wouldn’t have done deals with us as Standard who will now do deals with us as Hyatt.
“They see the best of both worlds, we have the creativity, we have the team and the Hyatt team joining us that adds infrastructure.
“There are owners that we would have loved to tap into and doing projects that we would love to have for Standard that are doing projects with us now that we have this infrastructure.”
The Hyatt deal was originally announced in August 2024 when Standard was operating 21 hotels offering about 2,000 rooms before being completed in October the same year.
The acquisition saw Hyatt pay $150 million as a base purchase price with another $185 million earmarked for additional properties as they enter the portfolio.