Tl;dr – Hyatt announced a new upscale brand in its portfolio, Unscripted by Hyatt, which has all the makings of a burgeoning soft brand.
Hyatt will be throwing around the word ‘lifestyle’ a bit more. Yesterday, Hyatt announced its latest brand, Unscripted by Hyatt, bringing the total number of brands in its portfolio to 35. Upon seeing that number, there’s a temptation to wonder how this brand will differentiate itself from Hyatt’s existing upscale, lifestyle, and elevated brands. And that’s fair. That said, this has all the makings of a ‘future growth’ step as part of Hyatt’s strategic push to grow aggressively in the luxury and lifestyle markets. According to Hyatt, Unscripted will bring a “flexible, collection-style approach where each property reflects its own identity and local flavor yet remains unmistakably Hyatt in quality and care.” Although I doubt they’ll ever admit it, Hyatt’s brand chart is starting to resemble Marriott’s, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Hyatt’s leadership and executives are attempting to emulate Marriott’s playbook for onboarding independent hotels into its soft brand portfolio.
When looking at side-by-side charts, you can visualize the investments each respective chain has made in recent years. We know Hyatt’s been doubling (tripling) down on all-inclusive, and Marriott has leaned heavily into the extended stay and hybrid-hotel-outdoors-vacation rental thing with the Sonder and Postcard Cabins deals. These charts also help us identify counterstrategies, as well as where each chain is trying to ‘make wine out of grape juice.’ Case in point, Marriott knows its all-inclusive game is just not there, and what have we started to hear about? The first all-inclusive JW Marriott, the first all-inclusive W hotel. Using a brand extension to try and cover up the gaps in the portfolio.
Skift (as of just a few days ago, coincidentally) did a write-up on all of Marriott’s 37 brands. Hyatt, now at 35, isn’t far away. If there’s a problem (or maybe a shortcoming?) we’ve seen with Hyatt’s aggressive growth through acquisition, it’s that all of its newly acquired brands have been destined for standalone life (Thompson, Dream, Standard), much in the way many of the old holdover brands Marriott acquired through the SPG merger have stood alone to carve out their niche – Westin (wellness), W (lifestyle).
Why is this a shortcoming, then? Because when it comes to competing by courting independent hotels (not just by shelling out money from the balance sheet to purchase a smaller chain), Hyatt doesn’t have the same ‘plumbing’ to onboard promising independents of different sizes. Hyatt has just one true soft brand – the Unbound Collection – and when you consider that Marriott has the tryptic of the Luxury Collection, Autograph Collection, and Tribute Collection. At the same time, Hilton has LXR, Curio, and Tapestry. Three seems to be the magic number, as IHG boasts the Vignette Collection, voco hotels, and recently debuted Ruby. With Hyatt, it’s evident that there’s a need for more segmentation and process if Hyatt wants to attract promising independent hotels seeking greater distribution channels, particularly those that don’t meet the criteria for the Unbound Collection.
Hyatt’s pre-release indicates that there are over 40 deals in the pipeline, with properties that could be among the first few Unscripted by Hyatt hotels. I wouldn’t be surprised if we looked up, and in a few years, Unscripted by Hyatt is hot on the heels of Marriott’s 240+ Autograph Collection properties.
This one makes sense to me.
