BERLIN — World of Hyatt has been the fastest-growing loyalty program among hotel brands in recent years, and Hyatt Hotels Corp. President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian says that's because the platform is built to prioritize connection over points.
During the 2026 International Hospitality Investment Forum EMEA, Hoplamazian said traditional points programs can sometimes be a barrier to building a lasting relationship with hotel guests.
"We conceived of it as an experience platform, not a points program, because oftentimes the most angry and irate guest emails I would get are when people feel objectified," he said. "They feel like this is just about a commercial transaction, and that's about as far away from the spirit of our culture as you can imagine."
That culture is reflected in how the company views everyone who works there as a "member of the Hyatt family," he said.
"It's based on emotional relationships, not on transactions," Hoplamazian said. "So from the very beginning, we thought about World of Hyatt being an aperture into many experiences."
During the company's most recent earnings call, executives announced World of Hyatt had surpassed 63 million members, and those members now account for roughly half the hotel rooms booked across the globe for the Chicago-based company.
While World of Hyatt is designed to be experience-focused, Hoplamazian said a lot of those experiences have been "heavily weighted toward well-being" because the platform was launched in 2017 — the same year the company purchased the Miraval brand.
"We see well-being as a means of carrying out our purpose as a company, which is to care for people so they can do their best," he said.
The next step for World of Hyatt will be expansion of generative artificial intelligence as part of the platform, which the company debuted on Hyatt.com a year and a half ago. Hoplamazian said this will change how guests plan travel.
"So instead of searching by city, date and room type, you are expressing an intent," he said.
For example, Hoplamazian described a family involved in a hypothetical trip then the important features of that trip.
"My wife and I, my 12-year-old son and my 9-year-old daughter would like to go somewhere where it's 70 degrees or warmer, where there's a great golf course and there's a beach and maybe a Michelin-starred restaurant within a five-minute drive," he said. "Then you hit return, and you get back a whole bunch of offerings and options. We're now advancing that to say, 'By the way, while you're considering these destinations, please also consider the fact that at this destination, you can do this kind of activity.'"
Hyatt is also making AI a bigger focus for internal use, offering a platform to operations teams that can help identify data trends and guide better decision-making in the business.
Hoplamazian said it can flag when certain segments have periods of softness in future bookings to general managers and allows them to dig deeper. But it's still early days.
"It learns from itself," he said. "Sometimes the signal is valid and there's a good reason for it and the team should do something about it, and sometimes [not]. That's how these models work. They learn at scale."