LOS ANGELES — There’s a generational change occurring the luxury hotel space, Mandarin Oriental’s Tiffany Cooper said.
In a podcast interview with HNN at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit, Cooper, head of development, Americas for Mandarin Oriental, said the way people take vacations is different — from baby boomers to Gen Xers to millennials.
“The days of the guys going to golf and the women going to the spa — that’s changed,” she said.
There’s also a change in the emphasis on opulent luxury, as seen with more traditional brands, she said. Looking at the space of ultra luxury brands, it’s now moving to a more understated luxury space where people want experiences with a more authentic connection to the hotel’s team as well as the community and locale.
“They want to be conscious citizens,” she said. “They want this conscious vacationing where you can do good in the community. Maybe you’re planting trees. Maybe you’re interacting with the community and our teams and our culture.”
How that translates to the look and feel of a hotel comes through working with local partners and people experienced in the market to help view everything through the lens of the locale, Cooper said.
“If you’re in Mexico, you have that authentic, beautiful Mexican hospitality,” she said. “If you’re in Dallas, you have that Texas hospitality. So, you don’t want to force anything. You want to make sure that you can really allow the location to unfold more organically, so it’s not forced. It has to feel authentic.”
Mandarin Oriental has a portfolio of 41 hotels, 12 residences and 26 homes across 26 countries. The company recently announced a new luxury resort and branded residences at Boquerón Bay in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, expected to open in 2028.
Other Americas development projects are also underway in Grand Cayman and the Riviera Maya in Mexico. The company is also redeveloping its Miami property, closing it for redevelopment into two towers: a hotel and branded residences to reopen in 2030.
Mandarin Oriental’s plan is to double its portfolio over the next 10 years, Cooper said. There are 29 total in the pipeline, and the company intends to open five hotels this year as well as a standalone branded residences property.
For her Americas team, there’s a laser focus on the U.S., but it’s also looking at Canada and Mexico and even as far south as Rio de Janeiro, she said. The Caribbean is also a major focus even though it already has a sizeable presence there already.
Any potential location must be able to deliver a true luxury experience, she said. That means a location in demand by Mandarin Oriental’s luxury guests as well as a location that can achieve a luxury rate premium. There are several target markets in the U.S. and Latin America where Mandarin Oriental doesn’t have a foothold yet.
“Really, in the U.S., there’s a lot of open market availability, provided that the dynamics work on financing,” she said.
The benefit of Mandarin and being in the luxury space is its branded residential units that help new projects pencil, she said. The branded-residential space is growing year over year alongside the luxury sector.
“So, it's just a matter of doing what we do in development, which is following breadcrumbs, speaking with developers, scouring markets and finding the right deal,” she said. “I mean, for us, we want growth, but we want smart, strategic growth, and that's what I'm mostly focused on.”