An Exclusive ILTM Interview With Hyatt’s New Head of Luxury

Hyatt announced this week that Tamara Lohan has been appointed the interim global brand leader for the company’s luxury division, a move that underscores the company’s sharpened focus on growing and differentiating its luxury portfolio. Luxury Travel Advisor sat down with Lohan for her first interview in the role at ILTM Cannes just hours after the news was released.

The appointment arrives as Hyatt’s luxury footprint expands at a pace unmatched in the company’s history. Hyatt now counts nearly 125 luxury hotels worldwide with more than 170 in the pipeline. Lohan, who joined the company following Hyatt’s $66 million acquisition of Mr & Mrs Smith in 2023, will guide the strategy and guest experience standards across Park Hyatt, Alila, Miraval and The Unbound Collection by Hyatt.

Her mandate is not to scale uniformity — quite the opposite, in fact.

“Luxury is personal,” she said. “My luxury is different from your luxury. It depends on why you’re traveling, the mode you’re in and the generosity of the service.”

Rather than standardizing a single global vision of luxury, Lohan aims to strengthen the signature traits of each brand.

“When you’re in an Alila, you should know you’re in an Alila,” she said. “When you’re in a Miraval, the experience is completely different.”

Her framework is operational and philosophy driven: Alila emphasizes place, culture and environmentally rooted design. Miraval serves as a wellbeing retreat centered on intention and personalization. Park Hyatt is quiet, residential luxury in major global cities. The Unbound Collection by Hyatt champions narrative-rich, character-forward independent hotels. The division also includes Impression by Secrets, the most luxurious all-inclusive resort offering by Hyatt (and a repeat winner of LTA’s Most Instagrammable Hotel in the World contest). 

It’s an approach directly informed by her two decades building the design-focused Mr & Mrs Smith portfolio. Hyatt, she said, offers an opportunity to apply that ethos at scale without replicating sameness.

Pipeline Momentum: Big Bets Across Park Hyatt and Miraval

Hyatt’s development pipeline puts that philosophy to the test. Miraval will open internationally for the first time in 2026 with the debut of Miraval The Red Sea on Saudi Arabia’s Shura Island. The adults-only property will feature 180 guest rooms, immersive programming and a 40,000-square-foot spa.

Park Hyatt is entering a global expansion cycle with high-profile openings in Cabo del Sol, Cancun, Mexico City, Vancouver and Phu Quoc, along with the much-anticipated reopening of Park Hyatt Tokyo. Lohan acknowledged the pressure surrounding the Tokyo project of “Lost in Translation” fame. 

“People have such a deep emotional connection to that hotel,” she said. “The pressure is extraordinary but it’s beautiful to see how much they care about preserving the feeling guests have when they walk in.”

In discussing Park Hyatt, Lohan invoked founder Jay Pritzker, who envisioned a small, intimate, art-driven brand decades before boutique became a category.

“He cared about creating a place that felt intimate and expressive. That’s the DNA,” Lohan said. “Our job is to protect it while opening the door to the next generation of travelers.”

Maintaining that legacy, she noted, is as important as modernizing for today’s expectations.

Lohan’s background shapes her approach. At Mr & Mrs Smith, she relied on real travelers to articulate what made each hotel resonate.

“It’s how people understand why a hotel is special,” she said. “Every property is unique. To bring it to life, you tell the story.”

Hyatt, she believes, can leverage storytelling to articulate distinctiveness across brands rather than collapsing them into one definition of luxury.

A Strong Signal to Travel Advisors

Over two days of meetings at ILTM Cannes, travel advisors delivered a consistent message.

“All I’ve heard is: We love your people. We want to do more. How can we do more?” Lohan said. 

She sees advisors as entrepreneurs and essential advocates — an orientation shaped by her experience building a global advisor program at Mr & Mrs Smith and that would presumably continue with Hyatt’s Privé advisor network. 

Why She Took the Job

Asked why she stepped into the role rather than moving on after the acquisition, Lohan was direct.

“The opportunity is too interesting. I see how I can help,” she said. “If I stopped working, I’d be very annoying to my children. They would become my project.”

Her focus now, she said, is supporting both Hyatt’s brand evolution and rising leaders within the organization, including Mr & Mrs Smith CEO Natasha Shafi.

“Supporting women in their careers — that’s a very fulfilling part of what I do,” Lohan said. 

Freed from the pressures of running a startup, Lohan is concentrating on the impact she can make.

“When you no longer have to worry about finances, you can focus on things that are fun, interesting, where you can make an impact,” she said.

For Hyatt, that impact will hinge on clarity of identity, emotional resonance and guest connection.

Hyatt now enters an important chapter — one defined by major openings, the modernization of legacy brands and a sharpened vision for what luxury means across continents. 

Under Lohan’s direction, the strategy won’t be luxury by scale but luxury by feeling, context and story.

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