From redefining boutique hospitality at W Hotels and The Standard to leading Hyatt’s rapidly expanding Lifestyle Group, Amar Lalvani has spent decades shaping the cultural heartbeat of modern hotels – proving that creativity, authenticity and scale do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Few executives have shaped modern lifestyle hospitality quite like Amar Lalvani. From helping define the cultural cachet of W Hotels to leading The Standard’s global expansion, Amar has spent decades at the intersection of design, culture, community and commerce. Today, as Executive Vice President, President & Creative Director, Lifestyle at Hyatt, he oversees an ambitious portfolio that includes The Standard, Thompson, Andaz, Dream, Bunkhouse, JdV by Hyatt and more, all while trying to answer a deceptively difficult question: what does “lifestyle hospitality” actually mean anymore?
“The honest answer is that lifestyle has become a word that is so overused it means almost nothing,” Amar said.
For him, the roots of the category go back long before “lifestyle” became an industry buzzword. He traces its origins to Morgans Hotel, when Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager sought to explain their concept to investors by comparing it to boutique retail – distinct, curated and deeply connected to a specific clientele.
“What I think lifestyle actually means is a hotel with deep insight into who its customer is and what it means to care for them,” he explained. “The decision to stay at The Standard, Thompson, Andaz, Dream, Bunkhouse, me and all, The Manner or any of our JdV properties is being made because the guest wants to be part of the environment we produce. The total environment.”
That environment, Amar stressed, extends far beyond design aesthetics. It is the room, the restaurant, the rooftop, the music, the cultural programming, the energy of the spaces and even the guests themselves.
“Getting all of it right is not surface level,” he said. “It is a profound commitment. It’s not easy.” That philosophy now sits at the centre of Hyatt’s rapidly expanding Lifestyle Group, which continues to grow internationally while attempting to preserve the creative integrity that made each brand culturally relevant in the first place.
“Our discipline against that is twofold,” Amar said of balancing individuality with scale. The first is ensuring creativity has a seat at the highest level of the business. “My title is President and Creative Director for a reason,” he said. “The product and experience can only be built and delivered at scale if creativity and commerce are seen as enablers that reinforce each other rather than elements at odds with each other.”
He believes too many hospitality companies separate “brand” from the rest of the business. Within Hyatt’s Lifestyle Group, he said, every function, from finance to HR, is part of the brand team because the group operates with end-to-end creative, operational and commercial accountability.
The second discipline lies in a framework Amar has applied throughout his career at The Standard and Bunkhouse, and now across Hyatt’s lifestyle brands. Every brand, he said, must be “distinct, succinct, truthful, ownable, executable.”
“If it doesn’t pass all five, it’s not a brand – it’s a name,” he said. For Amar, scale itself is not the enemy of creativity. “Insufficient or ineffective creative leadership and indiscipline are.”
That mindset is shaping Hyatt’s aggressive international growth strategy, with openings and developments spanning Shanghai, Rome, Seville, Lisbon, Brussels, Mexico City, Austin and beyond.
“We pay attention to two things,” Amar said. “The places that are actually being chosen by the travellers who are creating the global pulse, and frankly, the places we love.” While Hyatt’s global scale and 65-million-member World of Hyatt platform provide valuable data, Amar still believes instinct and cultural intuition remain essential. “We built The Standard, Bunkhouse and The Manner based on our intuition and innate feel for our clientele,” he said. “We were the clientele.”
The cities capturing Hyatt Lifestyle Group’s attention are those generating both economic and cultural momentum. Amar points to Lisbon as “one of the most interesting cities in Europe,” describes Seville as producing “some of the best culinary output in Spain,” and believes Mexico City has become “probably the most interesting food city in the world alongside Bangkok.”
He is equally enthusiastic about Austin’s evolution into a “global city,” Brussels’ growing influence in fashion and design, and the enduring creative power of Tokyo and Kyoto.
But perhaps most notably, he identifies India as the biggest long-term opportunity. “I think the most underserved market for what we do is India,” he said. “I believe the future is incredibly bright there for decades to come and Hyatt is investing heavily to be part of it.”
Another major area of growth is branded residences, where Hyatt Lifestyle Group is extending hotel experiences into permanent living environments through projects such as The Standard Residences in Miami and Mexico City and Andaz developments in Turks & Caicos and Papagayo.
“Branded residential, when it works, is the extension of an experience a guest already loves into the way they live,” Amar said. He points to The Standard’s sold-out branded residences in Lisbon, Palácio Santa Clara, and the enthusiasm for the recently completed residences in Midtown Miami, as evidence of emotional brand connection translating into residential demand.
“That is not just a real estate outcome,” he said. “That is a reflection of the love The Standard brand earned in Miami over the past two decades.”
For Amar, however, branded residences only succeed when they remain authentic to the hospitality experience that inspired them. “If the residence feels like a different product, the residents will know and the brand will be damaged,” he said.
Authenticity and local relevance are themes that repeatedly surface throughout the conversation, particularly when discussing The Standard’s continued global expansion. “The discipline against formula is to start every project with the city, not with the brand,” Amar said.
Rather than applying a standardised template, each property is built around the cultural identity of its destination.
“We do not arrive in Lisbon with a Standard playbook,” he explained. “We arrive in Lisbon and ask what the city actually is.” That process extends beyond architecture and interiors to partnerships, programming and creative collaborations. Amar said Hyatt Lifestyle Group intentionally works with local artists, designers, chefs and creatives to shape each project from within the community itself.
“We are not commissioning their work,” he said. “We are empowering their creativity and guiding the end result.” The result, he argued, is a portfolio of hotels that feel recognisably connected by attitude and cultural confidence, rather than by formulaic design standards.
“The recognition will come from the posture,” he said. “The irreverence, the cultural confidence, the design literacy. Not from a book of brand standards.”
Equally important, Amar said, is the willingness to walk away from projects that fail to align with a brand’s values or guest expectations – even when the economics appear attractive. “We made the decision to walk away from a Thompson project in South Beach last year because the location, program and execution, in my view, would not have met the expectations of a Thompson guest,” he revealed.
“The deal was real. The economics were attractive. But the brand fit was not.” For Amar, long-term brand integrity matters more than short-term growth metrics.
“The deals you walk away from are as important to the brand as the deals you make,” he said. “We will let others chase growth for growth’s sake. We will obsess about quality.”
Looking ahead, Amar’s ambitions for Hyatt Lifestyle Group extend well beyond pipeline numbers or global footprint. Over the next five years, he wants Hyatt to prove that “brand-led operating works at scale.”
“Conventional wisdom has been that scale and brand are trade-offs,” he said. “You could be small and distinctive, or large and generic. I think we are showing that you can do both.”
More personally, he explained that he is energised by the opportunity to build something lasting within an industry he deeply loves. “Having been an entrepreneur who worried about making payroll, I am really enjoying building something that I know will outlast me and will make a dent in an industry I love,” he said.
He also hopes Hyatt Lifestyle Group becomes the employer of choice for the next generation of hospitality creatives. “I want the most creative and brightest people to come work with us,” he added. “And I want to empower them to do things I cannot even yet imagine.”
Ultimately, Amar believes the future of hospitality belongs to companies willing to remain distinctive even as they scale – a challenge he compares to iconic global brands outside the industry.
“The companies I admire most are the ones that created something distinctive and stayed distinctive at scale,” he said. “Companies like Apple. Nike. Ralph Lauren. It is a small list, and none are in hospitality. I want Hyatt to be on that list.”