High-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and family offices have always shaped the hospitality business, from pioneers such as Conrad Nicholson Hilton in the US to César Ritz in Europe. However, the largest family offices today targeting hospitality are increasingly morphing away from the patriarchal structures of yesteryear into businesses that resemble their institutional peers, in a bid to future-proof their wealth and pursue long-term profits.
“Family office capital represents an increasingly formidable investor base, with the ability to write cheques across a range of asset classes and geographies, both debt and equity,” says Cody Bradshaw, CEO of L+R Hotels. “The best today are akin to leading private equity and institutional investors,” he adds.
Mohari Hospitality, the investment vehicle of entrepreneur Mark Scheinberg, is a case in point. The firm’s vertically integrated business model ensures it can manage every aspect of development and operation, with experienced in-house teams to boot. Fabio Longo, Mohari’s chief investment officer, joined the business in 2024 coming from previous roles at Goldman Sachs, Apollo and Bain Capital. Longo sees an opportunity to “bring Mohari to the next level”, particularly in terms of adding third party capital.
“We have built quite a team since I joined, covering all aspects of value creation,” he says. This includes an extensive investment team, capital markets team, debt and equity syndication specialists, a design team, development team and operational teams. “This is quite unique and differentiates us from other family offices – we are more institutionalised,” he underlines. “But our vertical integration also sets us apart from the institutions thanks to a ‘delta force’ split between New York and London that creates value across our investments.”
Professional structures
Professionalising the family office investment industry also includes pursuing consolidation, adopting technology, and ensuring that a sustainable approach is embedded in the business model. ESG strategies, for example, are increasingly defined by European legislation. Although the EU recently delayed its latest corporate sustainability reporting (CSRD) timeline to 2027, the imminent change means that operators will need to learn how to consolidate basic environmental data, including energy consumption per room, waste diversion rates and supplier footprints. This represents an opportunity for family offices to prove themselves to institutional partners, suggests Miguel Clemente, co-founder of hotel sustainability platform, Noytrall. “Corporate travel buyers and institutional investors now screen hotel portfolios for ESG maturity,” he says. “A verifiable data trail – aligned with CSRD, GRI, or ISO 14001 – can directly affect occupancy, brand preference, and access to green finance.”
Indeed, growing a family office business today necessitates developing deeper and more robust partnerships with institutions, private equity and REITs, who in turn expect a degree of transparency and a stable governance structure to pursue joint ventures. Italy’s Gruppo Statuto, the investment vehicle of Giuseppe Statuto, has proved particularly agile in linking with investment banks and institutional partners to acquire six trophy hotels in Europe since 2013, amounting to a total of around €1.2 billion.
Capital markets impact
As a result of these increasingly professional structures, the impact of family offices on capital markets has become striking. For example, in the first half of 2025, HNWIs were responsible for around 14 percent of hotel deals across the US, making them the most important category of buyers after private equity (33 percent) and owner / operators (16 percent), according to JLL data. This is a significant increase on HNWI’s driving less than 1 percent of transactions 10 years earlier in 2015. Daniel Peek, president of JLL Americas hotel & hospitality group, says that this extraordinary metric “reflects how wealth has grown, how allocation to hotels has become accepted, but also how hospitality deals are financed”.
Their role in shaping capital markets is also increasingly evident in Europe too. Last summer, Financière Agache, the family office of LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, acquired the Hotel Cap Estel on the French Riviera for €200 million. MCSI recorded this as one of 2025’s most expensive deals globally, at €10 million per key. In another key deal, Greek shipping magnate George Procopiou secured the remaining shares of the Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel Athens – worth some €700 million – from AGC Equity Partners.
“High net worth investors are investing more in hotels than previously and we have recorded an increase of 282 percent in the volume of investment generated from HNWIs over the past five years,” says Frederic Le Fichoux, Cushman & Wakefield international partner and head of hotel transactions, EMEA. Despite this significant increase, the investment activity represented by HNWIs represented only 3 percent of 2024 volumes, he notes.
Wealth explosion
According to Knight Frank’s Wealth Report 2025, the global population of HNWIs, those worth at least US$10 million, expanded by 4.4 percent to more than 2.3 million people in 2024. The population of individuals worth at least US$100 million climbed 4.2 percent, surpassing 100,000 for the first time. Almost 40 percent of the world’s HNWI population live in the US, compared with 20 percent for its nearest rival, China. Japan is the only other nation to boast a share of wealthy individuals larger than 5 percent.
“Global wealth has exploded by $6.5 trillion in the last decade; the richest 1 percent hold 45 percent of global wealth,” says Louis Keighley, head of Savills global residential development consultancy.
These individuals and families are characterised by an appetite for mobility, often acquiring multiple residences in low or no tax jurisdictions as part of their tax planning. A natural familiarity with luxury stays and segments such as branded residential similarly attracts such individuals towards the hospitality business.
Finally, their investment appetite for hotels has risen just as other investors have been drawn to the asset class, piqued by its revenues and the ongoing positive dynamics of global tourism. Some 44 percent of the 150 family offices surveyed for the most recent Knight Frank report said they plan to increase their exposure to real estate over the next 18 months, compared to just 10 percent looking to scale back.
As they seek to expand their hospitality investments further in the coming decades, they are likely to pursue further professionalisation, capturing talent and know-how from the institutional and private equity sectors as they hone their investment capabilities. Says Bradshaw: “It’s all about the people. One of the best parts about hiring great talents is that they attract other great talent – the business grows organically.”