V isit minorhotels. com, click on Destinations toward the top of the page, scroll down and you come upon a proportional symbol map that denotes the spread of Minor Hotels properties worldwide. There, in Thailand— where Minor keeps its worldwide headquarters, in Bangkok— you’ ll find 31 hotels, including six in Phuket, like the Anantara Layan Phuket Resort, where guests can take a Muay Thai class when not lapping in the azure waters of the Andaman Sea. Or, in Italy, where 60 hotels are at a traveler’ s disposal, including NH Collection Milano CityLife, which is godlike— literally: The hotel, in the city’ s trendy CityLife district, is a converted former 1930s church.
Move the cursor farther west on the map until it lands in the U. S. There, among the 3.5 million square miles of land, is one, solo Minor hotel— the 288-room NH Collection New York Madison Avenue, primely positioned close to the Empire State Building and a Jalen Brunson crossover from Madison Square Garden.
That lone hotel in the U. S.? Not for long; Dillip Rajakarier, CEO of Minor Hotels, makes clear it’ s part of a concerted effort by the group to expand its brands throughout the expanses of the Americas.
“ The U. S. has always been on our radar,” the Sri Lankan-born Rajakarier said. And it’ s not just happenstance: Around 16 % of Minor’ s inbound business comes from the U. S., visiting its more than 560 hotels worldwide across 12 brands.( As of the end of Q1 2026, Minor had 80 more hotels under committed development, representing more than 11,000 keys.)
GROWTH SPURT Minor Hotels’ 2018 acquisition of Spain’ s NH Hotel Group was transformative. It tripled the size of Minor overnight with the addition of nearly 380 hotels across Europe and Latin America. Doing so opened up its hotels to a traveling population that likely never experienced the brand before. With
A rendering of Anantara Miami Resort & Residences rising above Biscayne Bay. It’ s expected to open in 2030.
NH, U. S. travelers were now seven hours from one of its European destinations.
To hear it from Rajakarier, the deal turned Minor from a regional player into a transcontinental force.“ It was all about becoming a global company,” he said.( Minor had to fend off Hyatt Hotels Corp., for one, which, though it never made a formal bid, expressed interest in NH Hotels, but ultimately backed off.)
NH Hotels was the Tetris piece Minor was in search of. At the time of the deal, not one NH hotel overlapped with a hotel already in the Minor portfolio.“ We were strong in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia; they were strong in Europe and South America,” Rajakarier said.“ The whole acquisition was quite accretive in creating a global platform.”
The advance forward is in full swing, propelled, in part, by the launch of new brands. Early 2027 will see the inauguration of The Wolseley Hotels brand
in the U. S. with the scheduled opening of the 76-room The Wolseley Hotel New York in Manhattan, a conversion of The Chatwal. The Wolseley’ s roots are culinary: The Wolseley is— and remains— a restaurant located in London’ s Piccadilly, next to The Ritz London. The New York property will pay homage to its London namesake. The London restaurant was opened in 2003 by British restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King. In 2022, Minor Hotels acquired Corbin & King, now rebranded as The Wolseley Hospitality Group and inclusive of other restaurants in the UK, all keeping with a British flair.
The idea behind the brand, Rajakarier shared, is to inject some of that British style into a hotel, yet without forcing it.“ It’ s highly curated and elegant, and that elegance is built into the rooms, into the facilities, into the services,” he said.“ It’ s quite important because, otherwise, it becomes a cookie-cutter brand.”
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