The arms race in luxury hospitality isn’t over. Everyone thought the chase for sub-100-key hotels had peaked. It hasn’t. It’s accelerating — and now it’s spilling into ground-up projects that will redraw the map of hospitality.
Serious capital is now underwriting sub-100-key resorts at a scale we haven’t seen before — from the United States to Central America to Africa. What was once “too small to matter” is now the ultimate prize.
Why? Because scarcity is the only moat left. You can always build another tower. You cannot build another clifftop, another centuries-old vineyard, or another shoreline where zoning will never allow a repeat.
That’s why family offices and institutions are competing head-on for the same assets. Families lean in for identity and legacy. Institutions lean in because they’ve realized scarcity — not scale — is where returns hide.
And with demand outstripping the supply of legends, capital has poured into greenfield:
• In the U.S., retreats under 70 keys, built as cultural artifacts — not brand extensions.
• In Central America, eco-resorts rising where zoning will never allow a repeat.
• In Africa, lodges once dismissed as indulgences, now financed at institutional scale.
This is not just development. It is a reordering of hospitality around the irreplaceable.
A 30-key inn can trade at 14x EBITDA while a 300-key tower struggles at nine. That’s not inefficiency. That’s scarcity, priced in.
The arms race isn’t over. It’s accelerating. And the next icons won’t be bought — they’ll be built.
That’s the real story. And in Unspoken Hospitality, I write what allocators, owners, and families actually use to make their bets.
https://lnkd.in/gRc4FKKA
