By DAVID EISEN
Am
SAM NAZARIAN TEAMS WITH WYNDHAM ON NEW " SMART LIFESTYLE " HOTEL BRAND .
Hyde Sunset in West Hollywood , Los Angeles .
In 2020 , Sam Nazarian , the CEO of sbe , checked out of hotels , selling the remaining 50 % of sbe ’ s hotel business , which included such brands as SLS , Delano and Mondrian , to Accor . The epilogue was a focus on a food , beverage and nightlife empire , under his Disruptive Restaurant Group , including such sexy hotspots as Katsuya , HYDE Lounge and Skybar .
Four years later , Nazarian got the urge to jump back into the hotel space and he ’ s doing it this time with a somewhat unlikely partner , Wyndham Hotels & Resorts , a hotel company with a reputation that is high on value , low on sensuality . But a genuine friendship between Nazarian and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts President and CEO Geoff Ballotti makes the union a perfect match .
In what is being billed as “ smart lifestyle ,” sbe and Wyndham will embark on a brand with a working name of Project HQ Hotels & Residences ( the HQ a nod to headquarters and being at the locus of communities ), a concept with a focus on millennial and Gen-Z cohorts that promises to be “ approachable ,” and for those consumers that oftentimes find themselves priced out of the somewhat nebulous lifestyle hotel market space .
The announcement — contemporaneous with the much publicized hostile bid by Choice Hotels International for Wyndham ’ s hotel business — comes on the heels of sbe ’ s new equity partnership with singer and entrepreneur Marc Anthony and his company Magnus . The expectation is to open 50 hotels by 2030 . The brand will fall under Wyndham ’ s Registry Collection Hotels , able to tap into the scale of Wyndham Rewards , Wyndham ’ s loyalty program , which has some 105 million enrolled members .
GAME RECOGNIZES GAME Nazarian , by his own admission , was itching
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