Hyatt acquired Playa Hotels & Resorts in early 2025 for $2.6 billion, then quickly sold most of the underlying real estate. The $2 billion sale of 14 resort assets to a KSL Capital Partners–backed group closed last week, with Hyatt retaining the long-term management contracts. If KSL sounds familiar, it should. The firm owns Outrigger Resorts and Hotels, the Sheraton Kauaʻi Coconut Beach Resort, and a long list of other properties worldwide.
In other words, Hyatt no longer owns the buildings, but it still runs the hotels, controls the brands, and collects the fees.
We’ve talked a lot in this newsletter about ownership versus management because those lines are often misunderstood. Most major hotel brands don’t own the hotels they operate. They provide the flag, systems, distribution, and loyalty engine, while a separate owner holds the real estate and takes on the capital risk. That structure is known as the asset-light model.
To give you a sense of scale, Marriott, the largest hotel company in the world with more than 9,000 hotels, says that fewer than 1% of its properties are owned or leased, somewhere under 100 out of 9,000+
The Playa transaction is a clean, current example of how it works. Hyatt walks away with more brands, more rooms, and decades of management fees, without billions tied up in real estate. The owner gets the dirt, the upside of capital appreciation, and access to Hyatt’s demand engine. Each side focuses on what it does best, at least on paper.
The model isn’t friction-free. Management agreements are long, fees are often tied to revenue, and owners carry the downside when markets turn or costs rise. From the brand’s perspective, though, the math still works. Asset-light growth is faster, less volatile, and far more attractive to Wall Street.
A while back, we recommended the podcast Business Wars podcast series, Hilton vs. Marriott. If you’re interested in the origins of the asset-light model and how the industry moved from owning hotels to owning brands, it’s worth a listen.
