NEW YORK — A lot has changed at Hyatt Hotels Corp. in the seven years between Julienne Smith's tenures with the global hotel brand giant.
Since 2019, Hyatt has made a few large acquisitions, including Playa Hotels & Resorts, Standard International and Apple Leisure Group.
Smith, who rejoined Hyatt earlier this year as head of Americas growth, said the open properties in the brand's portfolio has nearly doubled since the last time she was with the company.
"Our ability to really super serve that luxury, lifestyle and now inclusive guest is unparalleled in the business," she said in a video interview with CoStar News Hotels at the 2026 NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum. "It's pretty exciting what that does, because it creates a halo effect and the opportunity to have high-impact hotels that our consumers are looking for to enjoy vacations and so forth, but then we also have opportunity to grow in smaller markets where people might be traveling for business."
In addition to its $2.6 billion deal to acquire Playa's 15 all-inclusive properties — and the subsequent sale of 14 of those resorts to Tortuga Resorts for $2 billion while staying on with 50-year management agreements for 13 of them — in 2025, Hyatt launched a joint venture with Grupo Piñero in 2024 that saw its all-inclusive portfolio grow by 30% at the time. Its $2.7 billion deal for Apple Leisure in 2021 made the brand the largest operator of luxury hotels in Mexico and the Caribbean.
As other hotel brands start to stake their claim in the Caribbean and Latin America region and the all-inclusive segment, Hyatt will lean on its established experience and breadth of offerings up and down the chain scale to continue to stand out against its competitors, Smith said.
The experience will "help us with distribution, because there's some markets, and arguably some small countries, that really only cater to the all-inclusive customer," she said. "We have the entire array of offering from mid-market all the way up to luxury all-inclusive. Our ability to have product, hotels in those markets is now a reality when it wasn't before."
In her new role with the company, Smith is currently focused on where Hyatt is growing and making sure its building out its teams in the right regions. Latin America is the next big focus, she said.
"We have a lot of opportunity to grow there," she said.
For more from Hyatt's Julienne Smith, watch the full interview above or listen via podcast: