Tamara Lohan Is Bringing a Curator’s Eye to Hyatt’s Luxury Brands
Tamara Lohan draws on more than two decades at Mr. & Mrs. Smith as she works to sharpen Hyatt’s luxury brands, preserve their individual identities, and ensure they deliver value as rates rise.
Park Hyatt Cabo del Sol. Photo: Courtesy of Hyatt
For more than two decades, Tamara Lohan built her reputation by deciding which hotels were worth recommending. As co-founder of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the boutique hotel platform acquired by Hyatt in 2023, part of the job was finding the gems—and passing on plenty of properties that did not measure up.
“We kissed a lot of frogs in our search for the perfect hotel,” Lohan explained to Luxury Travel Report. Over time, she says, that experience gave her an appreciation for just how difficult it is to get a hotel right. “Nothing is ever perfect, especially in hospitality,” she added. “Because a thousand things can go wrong.”
Now, as Hyatt’s global brand leader for luxury, Lohan is working from the other side. Instead of selecting exceptional hotels for a collection, she is helping shape a growing portfolio that includes Park Hyatt, Alila, Miraval, Impression by Secrets, and The Unbound Collection by Hyatt.
It is a considerably larger canvas, and one that presents an obvious challenge: How does a global hotel company continue adding properties without making its luxury brands increasingly difficult to distinguish?
For Lohan, the answer begins with being more selective. Hyatt is becoming a more brand-focused organization, she says, which requires prospective hotels to have “the right properties, the right location, the right owners, and the right general managers, and the right brand.”
“It all has to fit together,” she said. “We’re going to be a lot more careful about which brand we bring hotels into.”
That discipline matters as Hyatt pushes some of its most established luxury names into new territory. Park Hyatt, long closely associated with sophisticated urban hotels, has expanded its resort footprint, while the forthcoming Park Hyatt Riviera Maya will go another step further: The 148-room property, expected to open by the end of this year, will operate as an all-inclusive resort. (The hotel will retain Park Hyatt’s residential design, along with a culinary program comprising seven venues.)
For Lohan, that change in geography (or even format) does not necessarily change the brand. What matters is whether its fundamental character remains recognizable. She thinks of Hyatt’s luxury brands as distinct personalities, she told LTR, and does not want them “colliding with each other or stepping on each other’s toes.” Each needs an identity that is distinct, succinct, and believable.
At Park Hyatt, that identity includes residential-style architecture and interiors, art, culinary expertise, and a sense of calm. “Park Hyatt has never been about the bling or the showy,” Lohan said. “It really is timeless design.”
The recently restored Park Hyatt Tokyo is perhaps the clearest expression of that philosophy. The landmark hotel reopened last December after a 19-month renovation that kept much of the understated residential character that defined it since 1994 while updating guestrooms, restaurants, and public spaces. The project retained signature elements including its intimate interiors and restored the Tokyo Suite to its original design.
Other Hyatt luxury brands need to generate entirely different feelings. Lohan describes Alila in terms of simplicity, nature, and community, with architecture that can almost disappear into the experience. Miraval, meanwhile, is meant to give guests tools they can take home rather than simply offering a temporary wellness escape.
That distinction is becoming especially important as Miraval moves outside the United States. Miraval The Red Sea in Saudi Arabia will interpret the brand for its destination rather than duplicate its American resorts.
Arabian storytelling will be among the experiences, while the property will be the first Miraval without equine facilities. Its setting on a private beach instead creates opportunities around the water. “You couldn’t take the Miraval in the Red Sea out and pop it somewhere else,” Lohan said. “It really is grounded in where it is.”
Naturally, there’s another group Lohan believes can help hotels deliver that kind of specificity: advisors. A hotel may see a guest during one stay, she said, or perhaps across a handful of properties. An advisor has a much broader view.
“A travel advisor looks after their travel life in a in a way that we do not,” Lohan said. That knowledge, she added, can help hotels move beyond “reactionary personalization” toward anticipatory service, understanding what a guest might need before arrival.
That human knowledge becomes more valuable, in her view, as travelers encounter more information and AI plays a bigger role in trip planning. An advisor who has personally experienced a property and understands a client can make a recommendation based on context that a hotel—or an algorithm—may not possess.
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Ultimately, Lohan wants that combination of distinction and consistency to build something she was already chasing at Mr. & Mrs. Smith: trust. “At Mr. & Mrs. Smith, we always benchmarked ourselves on people coming back to us,” she says. “We knew we had done a good job if people trusted us.” Her goal is for guests to develop that same trust in Park Hyatt and return to their advisor saying, “Wherever I’m traveling, if there’s a [Park Hyatt], I’d like to stay there.”
There may be no better test of that trust than price. Virtuoso data presented this month shows just how much the equation has changed: luxury U.S. hotel ADRs within its network have climbed from $790 in 2019 to $1,445 in 2026, while international luxury ADRs rose from $985 to $1,653. With rates continuing to rise, Lohan acknowledged that price eventually becomes a test of whether individual hotels are delivering sufficient value.
“We have to be worth every penny and more,” she said. For true luxury, the goal is for a guest to leave thinking the experience was worth what they paid—and perhaps even that they would have paid more. The judgment encompasses everything from service and care to rooms, art, and atmosphere.
Yet as rates continue to rise, she acknowledged that some hotels may eventually fail that test. “There will be certain properties and maybe certain brands where you know that that guest will say it’s not worth that anymore,” Lohan said.
For Hyatt, then, luxury growth under Lohan is not simply about adding more places to stay. The greater challenge is ensuring every new hotel gives travelers a reason to understand why it belongs to that particular brand—and, increasingly, why it commands the price on the bill.
