From loyalty programmes as growth engines to 'a sea of same' hotel design: Exclusive insights from CEOs at the Global Hotel Alliance’s annual summit. Robbie Hodges reports

Each year, CEOs of the Global Hotel Alliance’s 45 member brands are invited to gather at a standout property within the group’s portfolio for a week-long summit of strategy sharing, future-gazing, and relationship-building, punctuated by fine dining and immersive local experiences.

This year, the alliance’s leadership descended on Brussels – a city known more for diplomatic hubbub than luxury and leisure, but home to a resplendent new hotel from Corinthia Group. Still in its soft-opening phase, the Corinthia Grand Hotel Astoria Brussels offered a suitably transitional backdrop for a conversation about the future of hospitality: the bar had just arrived from Italy and dust sheets floated through the upper suites.

Amid the mingling and intimate conversations (CEO interviews coming to Globetrender.com soon), was a headline lunch-time panel hosted by Global Hotel Alliance (GHA)’s CEO Chris Hartley, and featuring Dillip Rajakarier of Minor Hotels, Barbara Muckermann of Kempinski, Choe Peng Sum of Pan Pacific, and Simon Naudi of Corinthia Group. 

The global blanding of hospitality, tactics for mitigating overtourism and shifting centres of international wealth were each chewed over, but the discussion started on a decidedly positive note. 

Travel Confidence Remains High Despite Global Uncertainty

Despite geopolitical instability, economic concerns, and visa challenges, all CEOs on the panel expressed strong optimism for the future of travel.

Hartley announced that the GHA DISCOVERY loyalty program is expecting to hit US$3 billion in revenue by the end of 2025 - a significant increase on 2024’s US$2.7 billion. He quoted UN Tourism data which reveals that more than 300 million tourists travelled globally in Q1 2025, up 5% on Q1 2024, and 3% ahead of pre-pandemic levels. 

The volatility of the US market was a talking point throughout the panel but the outlook was optimistic; uncertainty being interpreted as a springboard for outbound travel spend. As mentioned by Hartley, while a mere 5% of citizens were passport holders in 1990, that figure now sits around the 50% mark – a notable leap, ripe with opportunity for international hotel groups. 

Growth Strategies: Rapid Expansion and Market Diversification

Minor Hotels, which recently made significant inroads within Europe through its acquisition of NH Hotels, took centre stage in discussions on growth strategy. Dillip Rajakarier, CEO of Minor Hotels, explained how the group has both made inroads in Europe, but also expanded NH’s presence in the Middle East and Asia.

“Our expansion for Europe is quite strong, in spite of some of the headwinds we are facing today. In the next 18 months, our target is to open about 40 hotels in Europe,” he explained. “And the target in the next three years based on the pipeline we have today is to open about another 300 hotels, which will take Minor to 800 hotels in the coming three years.”

Simon Naudi spoke to Corinthia’s notable expansion. The brand launched properties in New York and Bucharest earlier in the year, while the doors to its Rome property are due to open soon, followed by 6 or 7 more properties elsewhere. “As we’ve found in other cities where we’ve acquired properties which have a certain importance locally, we feel it is our duty to regenerate and bring back the glory of this hotel [Corinthia Grand Hotel Astoria Brussels] which is about 110 years old”.

Kempinski’s Barbara Muckermann echoed Naudi’s sentiments: “You can only design the future by understanding the past,” she said, talking about how her first 12 months at Kempinski involved trawling through the company archives.

“We discovered that Kempinski invented most of the things that today we consider modern hospitality; first hotel resort, in Potsdam;  first hotel with a pool; first restaurant with entertainment; and so on.” The brand’s growth strategy, “will be about bringing Kempinski up even further into luxury,” she explained. “This is strategically what we want to do. We’re going to start from our past to really understand what is relevant from this history for our guests in the future.”

Differentiation and global blanding

Others also reinstated the value of differentiation. Choe at Pan-Pacific paraphrased McKinsey’s observation that hospitality was becoming a “Sea of Sameness” with large-scale hotel groups like Marriott acquiring many smaller but growing hotel groups. This ‘blanding’ is a central subject in Globetrender’s macro-trend workshop. 

“The beautiful part of the alliance is that our hotels retain their DNA,” said Choe. “For the guest, that’s  powerful. And it works – in Tokyo, 70% of our bookings came through GHA DISCOVERY within three months of opening.” 

Naudi acknowledged that Corinthia’s small size, relative to others on the panel, was helpful in terms of preventing brand dilution. “Selling and running a luxury hotel is a completely different business to managing say a four or three-star hotel,” he said. “Having a management team’s focus on a particular style of the hotels is very important, so I would say [having one hotel brand] is an advantage.”

Minor’s Rajakarier was adamant that the group’s aggressive growth strategy wouldn’t lead to brand dilution. “We aren’t looking to create 40 or 50 brands. But as long as you have brand values and consistency at each of the brands, and the experience feels different, that’s important.” 

“We have business owners [property] who approach us regularly, but we’re very selective,” he explained. “We’ll say, it might not fit with this brand but could fit with another. You give them a choice, and that helps with distribution. But we’ve always been very careful. We only had eight brands, which are very unique. And now we’re adding another four because of demand in the market.” 

Promising markets

Panellists also opened up about where they see the most growth potential globally, prompted by Hartley. “ Which market would you bet on if you were betting on one single market in terms of tourism growth in the next five years?,” he asked.

Pan-Pacific’s Choe was cautiously optimistic about China. “There are a lot of government initiatives,” aimed at incentivising Chinese travellers, he said, referring to visa-free arrangements with Malaysia and Singapore among others. “But I don’t take this thing around tariffs and geopolitical issues lightly.”

“The India market is so strong,” he continued. “The Middle East is a huge market that we’re only just talking about. I think we just need to be very nimble, to pivot and go after these sectors that are really growing.”

“One-third of our customers are from the US and this will remain a key market for us going  forward,” said Corinthia’s Naudi. “But we’re also  focused on new markets in Asia. India and China have huge outbound potential, and we’re seeing more  affluent travellers from these markets coming to Europe.” 

Meanwhile others sided with Choe in their optimism for India and China, based upon the countries’ growing middle classes. Rajakarier placed his bet on India. “In addition to the traditional markets like Europe and the US, the usual markets.” Meanwhile, Muckermann said she was “incredibly optimistic.

“Whenever there’s uncertainty, there are opportunities. We are not seeing a slowdown in travel; in fact, we believe the next five years will be exceptionally strong for our industry. China is a  sleeping giant, and it’s waking up.”