Hyatt’s acquisition of boutique hotel platform Mr & Mrs Smith is showing early signs of success. Since the deal was announced in June 2023, both companies have reported expanded market reach and back-end systems have been integrated.
“It’s now a really easy process to add hotels,” said Tamara Lohan, CEO and founder of Mr and Mrs Smith, in an interview with Skift.
About 1,000 Mr & Mrs Smith properties will be available in Hyatt’s distribution and loyalty system by January 2025.
The Benefits of Hyatt
Starting life as a travel guide publisher 20 years ago, Mr & Mrs Smith is now an eclectic luxury and boutique collection that includes rooms inside caves, treehouses, restaurants with rooms, and underwater suites.
Under Canvas, a collection of 14 U.S. luxury camping experiences, was a Mr & Mrs Smith listing very keen to join the Hyatt system, and it happened quickly. “If that had been a traditional acquisition, it would have taken longer,” said Lohan.
Mr & Mrs Smith has given Hyatt access to 20 new markets where it had no presence, including Copenhagen, Croatia, Fiji, and Iceland. In other places, Hyatt’s 51 million loyalty members now have more choice, like Mallorca, where a Mr & Mrs Smith boutique hotel complements a Hyatt all-inclusive resort.
Lohan said: “The Mr & Mrs Smith businesses now on the World of Hyatt program are seeing really great growth. We could never have offered them that scale. The uplift in booking revenue is substantial.”
With 137 fully remote employees, Mr & Mrs Smith is still run as a separate entity from London, while the employees based in the U.S. are now direct Hyatt hires.
“Since we were acquired, our team has seen a lot more opportunities for career development. Suddenly, we have this parent company with a huge amount of opportunity, and it has helped us with retention. No one in my direct team has left, and we’re exploring opportunities for some of our key players within Hyatt,” said Lohan.
Growth Plans
In 2022, Mr. & Mrs. Smith made a profit for the first time since 2018 after struggling financially during the pandemic years.
“As the founder of a business, I know it’s a cliché, but it is like having another child,” said Lohan, “You want it to do well, and so when Hyatt acquired us, I genuinely felt that we had found a home and someone who would look after the brand.”
Hyatt bought the brand in a final all-cash deal of £58 million (about $72 million using exchange rates at the time).
Lohan is on a team researching luxury brands and how Hyatt can improve them. “The opportunities with Hyatt continue to astound me,” she said. “The fact that they own Apple Leisure Group could be a really interesting source of distribution for our hotels, and that’s who we really serve at the end of the day. This incredible collection of hotels that we’ve built up over 20 years.”
Expanding Mr & Mrs Smith, Too
Mr & Mrs Smith’s own platform now has more than 2,000 hotels and villas in its collection, adding 392 in 2023. It expects to keep adding hotels and villas at a similar rate next year.
Lohan said some Hyatt properties, like the Park Hyatt Tokyo, will eventually gain an additional distribution presence on the Mr & Mrs Smith platform, but this will not happen automatically.
“They will still have to go through our curation standards,” she said. “What has really struck me is that [Hyatt] is a company of its word. When we were acquired, I was promised we would not have to drop our curation standards. They said they were committed to Mr & Mrs Smith keeping what makes us special, and they have lived that every day.”
One might assume that the end goal of Hyatt’s acquisition was to have the whole Mr & Mrs Smith collection available via Hyatt. But this is not the case, Lohan said. Owners have a choice.
“We have to be very careful because we are dealing with a lot of owners who don’t want to be a part of Hyatt. We have a few who do not work with Booking.com, Expedia, or any of the big OTAs [online travel agencies, which can list properties once they’re listed on Hyatt].”
“We’re very respectful of all the hotels and owners,” explained Lohan. “Obviously, there are others that are loving being part of Hyatt and are all for it.”
Ultimately, as the parent company, Hyatt earns commissions on whether or not Mr & Mrs Smith properties join its system.
One Hyatt property that Lohan has her eyes on is The Park Hyatt Tokyo because of its sleek, high-ceilinged interiors that give a seductive atmosphere. The property is undergoing a renovation for a relaunch in the fall of 2025.
Before the renovation began, Lohan recently stayed at the Park Hyatt Tokyo with her family: “It is an extraordinary property. It has an ancient teahouse right in the center. It’s so beautifully formed, so comfortable, so welcoming. Hopefully, we’ll bring it onto Mr & Mrs Smith in time.”
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