Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is jumping into to the all-inclusive pool through an alliance with owner-operator Playa Hotels & Resorts to create an upper midscale brand called Wyndham Alltra (all-inclusive travel for all). The license deal will leverage Wyndham’s distribution and Playa’s operational expertise in the space.
Wyndham’s 22nd brand will debut at Playa’s 458-room Wyndham Alltra Cancun in Mexico and the 287-room Wyndham Alltra Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Both properties are currently being renovated and are expected to convert to Alltra in December.
The deal, which has been in the works for some 18 months, gives Wyndham a way to give its 80 million rewards members access to all-inclusive and a new tool to recruit resort owners and developers looking for more robust distribution.
Wyndham President and CEO Geoff Ballotti told HOTELS more Alltra deals with Playa are expected and he sees even more opportunities to grow the brand with additional partners as the Playa deal is is only an exclusive territorial agreement for Mexico, and select Latin American and Caribbean countries. While no further deals have been executed, he pointed to markets in southeast Asia, the Pacific Rim and Europe as having the best potential for Alltra growth, adding that Africa, India and the Middle East should also present opportunities.
Playa already owns and/or manages a portfolio of more than 20 resorts located in Mexico, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic and has all-inclusive developments in place with Hilton and Hyatt Hotels Corp. In addition, Hyatt’s recent acquisition of Apple Leisure Group doubles its global resort footprint and makes it the leader in luxury all-inclusive resorts, as well as the largest operator of luxury hotels in Mexico and the Caribbean.
When asked about potential growth targets for the brand, Ballotti said he would not put any audacious numbers on a target. “We will be very careful and very selective as we have been with Trademark Collection,” he said. “We announced that brand a few years ago and said we thought we could get it to 25 hotels, and I think we’re at 125 hotels – not only domestically but in Spain and Austria and Germany. I would look at Alltra very similarly. We will be very slow, very deliberate, very selective. This isn’t select-service This is all about finding and selecting the best operators.”
Nonetheless, Ballotti added that with leisure travel trending so well as the world starts to come out of COVID, the hot all-inclusive sector will continue to be all the rage. “Our leisure economy and midscale for the past 26 consecutive weeks just gets better and better,” he said. “Our leisure economy, midscale business as reported by Smith Travel is up over 2019. When you look at the months of July and August, leisure economy RevPAR is up strong double-digits, like 15% to 16%.”
While much of the recent all-inclusive growth has come in the upscale and luxury segments, Ballotti concluded that there is a big opportunity in the economy and midscale space with consumers looking to get away. “Just July and August in Cancun, occupancy was up nearly 40% to 2019… That’s how incredibly strong the demand is out there.”