LOS ANGELES — Growth comes in many different forms, but it’s not something that just happens on its own.
During an executive panel at the 2026 Americas Lodging Investment Summit, hotel company leaders discussed their respective plans to expand and what it’s going to take to achieve those goals.
Ways to grow
PM Hotel Group’s priority over the next 24 months is primarily organic growth, President Joseph Bojanowski said. It acquired or merged with three other companies over the past few years, so it has a stable foundation to deliver growth with its current properties and grow with the owners of these properties.
This is also the first time the U.S. has seen negative revenue per available room performance outside of a recession, he said. The general forecast for hotel performance this year is flat with increasing expenses. That translates to operational outperformance and RevPAR growth through market share, revenue per occupied room and customer loyalty.
Outside of that, it will look at acquisitions where it may be able to accelerate market penetration in a geographic area it’s not currently in or if it’s a capability acquisition, he said.
“I think in this environment where there is anemic revenue growth, you’ve got to outcompete. You have to grow market share,” he said. “There’s plenty of business for some, and there’s definitely not business enough for everyone. There’ll be some winners and losers.”
While there’s probably an opportunity for Starwood Hotels to create another brand, the company is deliberate with its brands, CEO Raul Leal said. The company is growing, and he believes there will be opportunities with some brands and properties out there that have reached a level of obsolescence at which the brand, managers or investors don’t know what to do with them.
That’s where Starwood can step in, starting with capital and helping to acquire and reposition a hotel, especially if it’s a good box in a good market that would fit one of its brands, he said.
“That’s a big part of our plans, especially for Treehouse,” he said, adding they’re looking at acquiring a dozen properties to convert to the brand.
Its Baccarat and 1 Hotels brands are different because with their new-build or conversion projects, they’re including residential, he said.
Even with these growth plans, Starwood doesn’t intend to scale to 200 hotels, he said.
“You can't do this kind of intimate understanding that we want for these customers and have 500 hotels,” he said.
Hotels in the independent sector continue to thrive, Global Hotel Alliance CEO Christopher Hartley said. His organization has a list of about 300 independent brands around the world with 10 hotels or more that are operating on their own.
“They’re trying to figure it all out,” he said. “They’ve got [online travel agencies] on one side. They’ve got the big brands on the other side.”
The growth opportunity comes from expanding into markets that are becoming popular internationally, he said. Japan is one market with promise, and other emerging markets include Brazil, Indonesia and India with its rapidly expanding middle class.
“You’re going to see these markets starting to move, and they’re going to create their own hotel brands,” he said. “They’re going to have independent players, so we see that opportunity to expand.”
It’s more difficult to reach into a market, such as the U.S., that is so mature and already has a large stable of brands, he said.
Sonesta International Hotels will continue to lean into the franchising model, President and CEO John Murray said. It had 26% net unit growth in 2025 through a mixture of conversions from managed to franchised hotels along with organic growth.
The company has invested in new customer relationship management platforms to get to know its customers better, he said. When it does take OTA business, the company is focusing on getting to know the guests and the guests’ email addresses to market them directly. Overall, it has been working on improving its marketing on search engines as well.
Sonesta has been trying to identify partnerships with adjacent hospitality groups, whether that’s through timeshares or gaming or other hotel companies that don’t have the presence in the U.S. that Sonesta has, he said. This can result in a relationship in sharing information on their respective guests and market to each other’s guests.
“I think that all of those things coming together is going to drive a significant amount of growth for Sonesta and also help drive more franchisee interests so that franchise side of the business grows significantly, too,” he said.
Another avenue of growth is its cruise business, he said. There has been a lot of interest from developers in the Middle East growing its business in the region as well as in Latin America. The company recently opened a hotel in the Caribbean in Curacao. It has several projects under development in the Dominican Republic and Mexico.
Differentiation
It’s difficult to make the argument that any hotel segment is being underserved, Bojanowski said. When looking only at Marriott International and Hilton, together they have more than 60 brands. Adding Hyatt Hotels Corp. and Accor and others takes that total much higher.
“You’ve got literally 100 brands, which are arguably too many,” he said.
PM Hotel Group's outdoor-focused properties offer experiences that resonate with travelers, he said. That particular type of product, however, is a tough business model to build at a scale in which hoteliers can make money.
“The cost of building in those areas is high,” he said. “The seasonality of them is a challenge to overcome, and then where do you find employees out in the middle of nowhere? So, you may have to build housing with it and other things.”
There are significant levels of people traveling with more disposable income than ever before, Leal said. At the luxury level, these travelers who can be considered old or new money both want the same thing.
“They want, one, a high level of execution of service and making sure that you understand and you know what it is they want without being creepy with technology, but understanding what it is they’re really looking for and delivering on those preferences,” he said.
These guests also want choices of activations in the hotel as relative to just different things, he said. There can be wellness activations and food-and-beverage activations that bring in local partners. They’re looking for something different now, even if it’s the same hotel they stayed at 10 years ago, and they want it more curated.
“You have to take into consideration the youth and the amount of money that is out there right now,” he said. “They want those experiences, and they won’t stay in a hotel that doesn’t have it.”
Generic luxury is a risk where it becomes difficult to justify the rate premium, Hartley said. If a hotel is offering a standardized luxury experience, it’s somewhat superficial and not personalized. Hotels that charge $1,000 to $2,000 a night need to have a completely different type of experience.
“There’s only so many people who are willing to pay $1,000 or $2,000 a night forever if they’re just getting a generic luxury experience,” he said.