If you want to understand luxury hospitality in 2025, look at what is actually closing—and who is behind it.

In the $50 million to $200 million range, boutique transactions are up meaningfully, with well-positioned assets trading at or near record price-per-key levels. This is not because the market is irrational. It is because these assets offer something most don’t: defensibility, cultural equity, and earnings that do not depend on discounts.

Buyers haven’t disappeared. They’ve evolved. Private equity certainly hasn’t vanished—but it has migrated upstream. Large institutional platforms that once ignored boutique assets are now actively targeting them, bringing significant capital and a new layer of competition into the sub-100 key space.

And competing with PE directly:  owner-operators, strategic platforms, and long-horizon family capital. These groups are underwriting not just to near-term IRR but to long-term identity. And the properties they are buying? Nearly all are sub-100 key, character-rich, and irreplaceable.

This is not the return of investment. It is the return of discernment.

Investors are responding to properties that make sense in full—physical plant, cultural footprint, P&L integrity, and future relevance.

Sellers who understand how to surface that coherence—not just clean up the books—are commanding strong outcomes, without needing leverage gymnastics or capital markets heroics.

Outperformance in this cycle does not look loud. It looks intelligent. It is not driven by froth or speed, but by the slow, deliberate repositioning of money toward assets that will matter in ten years, not just cash flow next quarter.

This is not luxury bouncing back. It is the market re-learning how to value it.