Don’t bank on too many traditional hotel questions, as the company might just have a luxury superyacht up its sleeves like the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. Think big brands can’t do cool, lifestyle concepts? Bah humbug — Marriott leaders will point to the revamped W Hotels brand and the continued expansion of Edition as proof they’re managing just fine. Oh, and lest you forget about the recent expansion into outdoor travel with the acquisition of Postcard Cabins and a long-term agreement with bespoke hotel brand Trailborn.
Loyalty programs are getting stale? Nah, Marriott keeps it interesting by offering its Bonvoy members the opportunity to bid points on Taylor Swift tickets.
Look what you made me do, Swift might say (I don’t think she was talking about Marriott Bonvoy strategy, but who knows?).
Of course, while I planned on chatting all things luxury and real estate with Capuano, of course news broke regarding Starwood Capital Group Chairman Barry Sternlicht’s plan to rebrand SH Hotels & Resorts to Starwood — the brand Marriott famously absorbed back in 2016 for a casual $13 billion.
Any hard feelings about this brewing at Marriott’s Bethesda, Maryland, headquarters?
Hardly.
“Back in [2016] when we did the deal, it was always contemplated that we were going to retire the use of the [Starwood] name, and Barry was going to retain the name, and he did,” Capuano said in an interview with Hospitality Investor during the 2025 Americas Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles. “About a year ago, he called me and said, ‘We're going to resuscitate it.’”
Starwood Capital is a significant player in the hospitality sector beyond just SH Hotels & Resorts-turned-Starwood. The investment group owns a wide swath of hotels from major hotel groups like Hilton and Marriott, and that relationship appears to be a strong one.
“They gave us a heads up, which they weren't required to do. The teams worked together transparently and collaboratively to make sure neither of us, inadvertently, stepped on each other's toes,” Capuano said before adding of Sternlicht: “He's an incredibly wise, accomplished guy, and I'm sure he'll do great things with it.”
Brands like 1 Hotels, Baccarat Hotels, Treehouse Hotels and the SH Collection have operated under the SH Hotels & Resorts banner. Additional brands could be in the works, SH Group CEO Raul Leal told Questex in a separate interview during the ALIS conference.
Rather than see this as a new competitor rising, Capuano sees this rebranding as a reflection of the broader industry.
“In some ways, it's a validation of what we and the other big global brand companies are doing and have been doing,” the Marriott CEO said. “[Sternlicht] now finds himself with a diverse set of brands under his umbrella, right? He's got 1 Hotels, he's got Baccarat, he's got Treehouse, and I assume from the outside, his intent is to use the Starwood umbrella to tie that portfolio together.”
Luxury expansion
It’s a busy time at Marriott, as the company reported nearly 7% net rooms growth last year, and reported an average of 3 new hotel deals a day across all brand segments. The company hit a significant stride in the midscale segment last year with the newly acquired City Express and organically launched StudioRes and Four Points Flex by Sheraton brands.
But the company also saw significant growth in the luxury segment.
Marriott’s luxury portfolio of seven brands now features 658 hotels, resorts and branded residential developments. The company also signed last year a record number of 61 deals for luxury hotels and resorts — bringing the overall luxury pipeline at Marriott to 266 properties at the end of last year.
Some of the company’s recent high-profile openings in the luxury sector include W Prague, The St. Regis on the Bund, Shanghai, The Jeddah Edition and the extensively renovated W Hollywood and W Union Square in New York City. JW Marriot Crete Resort and Spa — the brand’s Greek debut — is slated to open this year, and the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection’s third vessel, Luminara, is slated to make its inaugural voyage this summer.
In terms of development and financing, most new luxury projects are mixed-use.
“It's really hard, especially domestically, to get a luxury deal to pencil without at least some small residential component,” Capuano said.
Further, the company is seeing significant interest in its soft brands like the Luxury and Autograph Collections as well as the Tribute Portfolio.
The Luxury Collection made its debut in Germany last year with the opening of Koenigshof, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Munich. The all-inclusive Almare, a Luxury Collection Resort, Isla Mujeres, opened last year in Mexico and is Marriott’s 500th property in the Caribbean and Latin American region. Further, the company has signings for The Luxury Collection in Shenzhen, China, while The Park Lane Hong Kong, Autograph Collection, is also slated for the Asia Pacific region.
“The interest in the full-service soft brands is off the charts,” Capuano said. “[With the Tribute Collection] in particular, we had to do a little rejiggering because, if you talk to Barry and the Starwood teams when they launched Tribute, it was meant to go head-to-head with Autograph. So, we had to figure out in the brand architecture where it sat. But once we clarified that to the owner community, the volume of interest on a global basis exploded.”
Capturing the future of luxury travel
The luxury sector is one seen as recession-proof because of those who largely fill up these kinds of hotels. Spending in this category is also rapidly growing: A Marriott presentation at the International Luxury Travel Market conference in Cannes, France, late last year forecasted global spending in just the aspirational luxury leisure hospitality segment would go from the $84 billion seen in 2023 to $107 billion in 2028.
The luxury segment of the market is also getting younger: 80% of the luxury goods market will either be millennials or Gen Z by 2030. Other reports estimate the global luxury travel market could surge to $3.3 trillion by 2032.
Is Marriott ready for all these changing demographics and generational transfer of wealth?
“We feel great about our luxury portfolio. We've got entry level luxury with JW all the way up to Bulgari,” Capuano said. “We've got hard brands. We have the Luxury Collection if you want something with more individuality and personality. So, I think we feel pretty good about it. What we've got to do is maintain the integrity of those brands.”
Maintaining the integrity of these brands is acknowledgment that customers in this segment are discerning and expect the best of the best. Even during housekeeping cutbacks during the pandemic, it remained business as usual — including turndown service — at luxury hotels. So, it’s important to make sure a St. Regis acts like a St. Regis and that a Ritz-Carlton Reserve — known for their remote, exclusive locations and highly personalized services — stands distinctly from its parent, Ritz-Carlton.
“What we can't have is a development partner who comes to us and says, ‘I'm going to build a Ritz-Carlton, but I need more rate to make it pencil, so can I call it a Reserve?’” Capuano said. “Well, if you want to build a Reserve and it's in a destination that makes sense for Reserve, of course you can, but you can't build a Ritz-Carlton and just call it a Reserve.”
“You can't build a JW and call it a St Regis,” Capuano added. “This is true for all 30 plus of our brands, but particularly in luxury: We've got to be really disciplined on product.”
Marriott mainstays turned competitors
Luxury and lifestyle collaborators come and go, but their influence is never forgotten.
While Sternlicht left the original Starwood Hotels & Resorts brand well before the Marriott takeover, his mark is still clearly visible within the company — particularly with his impact on lifestyle hotels with W.
Additionally, the company launched Edition with lifestyle hotel and nightlife maven Ian Schrager, who still has a few projects left with the company but who is now spending most of his time focusing on the expansion of his own Public Hotels brand.
Can Marriott continue to do well in this arena given who the industry views as leaders in industry innovation are now technically competitors?
While emphasizing the friendship and partnership that still exists with both Schrager and Sternlicht, Capuano also noted the role Marriott plays in any kind of future industry disruption.
“Every industry is ripe for disruption every day. That's kind of how I think about it. Both Barry and Ian will go down in history as having been legendary disruptors,” he said. “If you read some of the early interviews that Ian and [the late Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson] did when we launched Edition, Ian said, ‘I want to disrupt, but I want to do it at scale, and the only way I can do that is to tie up with a big, global company.’”
“So, I think creative entrepreneurs will always wrestle with, do I do it myself so I can keep it pure, or do I partner so I can do it at scale? And some will choose each of those paths,” Capuano added.
By Cameron Sperance
