Wyndham Hotels & Resorts and lifestyle hospitality group SBE are launching a new lifestyle brand under the working title Project HQ Hotels & Residences.
This is Wyndham’s first new brand since it launched Echo Suites Extended Stay By Wyndham in 2022. The company launched Wyndham Alltra, an all-inclusive brand, in 2021.
Project HQ will join Wyndham’s Registry Collection Hotels brand and will be a part of Wyndham Rewards. SBE will assume management of all the properties.
There are plans to open 50 Project HQ hotels by 2030 with about 150 rooms per property. The new brand plans to have 50% of its properties in the U.S. and 50% international, with 80% of them being conversion projects and 20% new builds.
All hotels in the U.S. are planned to be conversions, while some international hotels will be ground-up new construction. SBE Founder and CEO Sam Nazarian said the initiative will look to convert properties at $30,000 to $50,000 per key.
Nazarian said talks are underway for four sites in the U.S., two sites in Europe and two sites in the Middle East.
The new brand is dubbed as the first “smart lifestyle” brand, geared toward millennial and Generation Z travelers.
Nazarian said his company, which hasn’t had a hotel brand since Accor took full ownership of its hotel brands in 2020, considered which demographics it could target to make the biggest disruption in the hotel industry and decided to focus on the younger generations.
“We feel really, really curious about how to be relevant within that ever-growing and fast-growing segment,” he said. “We thought, ‘OK, we have this connectivity to a very unique and coveted audience that really has been going to Airbnb and more bespoke hospitality destinations; why don’t we really look at a category within lifestyle that complements what we did for the last 20 years in luxury to really focus on a new category called smart lifestyle?’”
The plan to attract millennials and Gen Z travelers to Project HQ Hotels & Residences is based around “content and connectivity,” such as partnering with YouTube influencers and celebrity chefs to enhance the guest experience with attractive digital wellness and food-and-beverage offerings.