Hyatt Hotels has announced it's buying London-based Mr & Mrs Smith, a direct booking platform for 1500, world-wide curated boutique and luxury properties. Hyatt is paying £53.0 million (over CAD $90 million) for 100 per cent of the company.
“We are excited by this planned acquisition and to explore bringing guests and World of Hyatt members even more global luxury offerings across hundreds of geographies – including over 20 countries where there are currently no Hyatt hotels such as Fiji, Croatia, Iceland and Anguilla,” said Mark Vondrasek, chief commercial officer, Hyatt.
“Founders Tamara and James Lohan alongside their impressive team have built the ultimate global direct booking collection of truly unique stay experiences including rooms located in treehouses, within caves, and underwater suites. Importantly, we see a lot of synergy between our collective ethos of care, and we look forward to working together to bring our shared focus to new, memorable stay experiences for guests and World of Hyatt members – and introduce new guests to Hyatt hotels around the world.”
The strategic acquisition is expected to build on Hyatt’s luxury positioning and further strengthen Hyatt’s distribution capabilities, especially across Europe – through forging relationships with additional hotel owners and more than 1 million loyal Mr & Mrs Smith members.
Over the last year Hyatt also completed the acquisition of Dream Hotel Group and portfolio of over 30 Lindner Hotels & Resorts and me and all hotels, as well as organic growth of Hyatt’s global portfolio.
As a result of such strategic moves, membership in the World of Hyatt loyalty program has more than tripled during the past five years.
Following the closing of the Mr & Mrs Smith deal in Q2, Hyatt plans to unveil direct booking access to properties within the Mr & Mrs Smith platform through Hyatt’s distribution channels, including Hyatt.com and the World of Hyatt app.
Hyatt is exploring ways to enable World of Hyatt members to earn and redeem points across eligible hotels in the Mr & Mrs Smith collection.
Following the planned acquisition close, over 100 Mr & Mrs Smith colleagues are expected to join Hyatt’s Commercial Services team, including co-founder Tamara Lohan who will serve as Mr & Mrs Smith CEO, reporting to Mark Vondrasek, Hyatt’s chief commercial officer, and James Lohan who will serve as Mr & Mrs Smith chief creative officer.
