Inside Asia-Pacific: How Wyndham is Building Hotels for a Rising Middle Class

🎥 May 28, 2025 📺 No Vacancy News ⏱ 7m 👁 26 views

Recorded last week at the 2025 Wyndham Global Conference in Las Vegas, this Glenn Haussman #NoVacancyNews features ...

About Joon Ooi

Joon Ooi, President of Asia Pacific at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, has emphasized the company's "owner first" business philosophy as central to its growth strategy in the region. In a June 2025 interview, he stated that the company blends its own brand preferences with the realities of different markets and what owners want to decide how and when to grow. He noted that the Wyndham and Ramada tier brands remain strong favorites, accounting for about 50% of annual growth, while the company also introduces new brands. Ooi cited Microtel by Wyndham as an example of a brand adapted to local market nuances while maintaining its core DNA. He described the middle class as a key growth segment and said the company is aligning with consumer trends by focusing on the midscale level. Ooi has also highlighted strong growth metrics for the region. In 2024, he said Wyndham opened 220 hotels and signed 286 in Asia Pacific, and noted that the company now has over 1,800 hotels in the region covering segments from budget to luxury. He pointed to China's domestic travel prospects, citing increased air capacity and infrastructure upgrades, and said China experienced a more than 150% increase in inbound travelers in 2023. In earlier remarks from 2020, Ooi described Vietnam as a market with "phenomenal growth" potential, with more than 10,000 rooms in its executed pipeline. He also discussed undergoing a 14-day quarantine in Shanghai in June 2020, stating that he felt China was "one of the safest places on earth" due to government-imposed processes for international arrivals.

Source: AI-verified profile updated from Joon Ooi's recent appearances. Browse all interviews →

Transcript (23 segments)

Glenn0:00

Hey everybody, it's your hospitality friend Glenn here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada at Caesar's Forum. Why? Because I am at Wyndham's Global Conference 2025. And it wouldn't be a global conference unless I talk to people around the globe. And that's what this guy is doing here. But first, I want to thank Actable. Actable gives you the power to profit. Check them out at actable.com. I got Joon, president of Asia-Pacific here for Wyndham. Really cool. It's quickly becoming my favorite part of the world. Oh, there's so much to do and so much to see and it's a very diverse region that's undergoing phenomenally strong growth. I will say from our perspective in the United States, when I was growing up, Asia just felt like a monolithic body, like one unit, but then as I got older, I realized there are so many different countries and cultures and so much opportunity to bring the love of hospitality and travel to it. Well, the place to start is where are we in Asia Pacific with the overall sense of travel and where are you growing?

Joon Ooi1:02

Okay. May I just touch on the point that you raised earlier in terms of the way Asia is perceived by you? Even as someone who lived in Asia, we are still discovering new nuances, differences in culture because there are so many different markets and countries and so many different languages, favorite food, local food and so on. We ourselves are discovering. So from yourself, I can understand even you're 10,000 miles further away, you see it, but we still do see it just to make you feel comfortable, you're not alone.

Glenn1:33

No, particularly since the images that I grew up with on television and movies didn't really give a multicultural understanding of that particular region. All right. So we got China. China is the big beast, right? The giant country there. And that really has been growing. How are you seeing it specifically now that I think we're probably at our second generation of growing middle class?

Joon Ooi1:53

Yeah, the growth has been very strong. Overall the market has been very strong and Wyndham has been growing very strong as well. Just last year, the Asia Pacific welcomed more than 300 million arrivals and it's getting closer and closer to pre-pandemic numbers. For us at Wyndham, we opened 220 hotels last year and executed or signed 286, and we continue to be on a strong trajectory of growth. That's aided a lot by the diversity of brands that we have to offer to all the different markets.

Glenn2:28

Yes, you are working really hard to be signing that many deals.

Joon Ooi2:33

The team is awesome. I have a strong team that I love very dearly and they are very hardworking, very smart. They know how to engage owners and we have this business philosophy of owner first. We put ourselves into the shoes of the owners and it's not just a cliche. We actually really do and the team actually does that, and that's what gets us ahead and moving forward together with owners because a constant feedback is they love working with us because we listen and we react and we respond to their needs.

Glenn3:03

Yeah. One more question on China before we move around. We talk here in the United States about urban markets, secondary markets and tertiary markets. In China, you're talking about tier four, tier five. So you've got massive cities that dwarf the size of any American city. I think maybe New York would fit in maybe top 20, right?

Joon Ooi3:26

Probably, yeah, depends on where you draw the boundaries of the city.

Glenn3:29

Exactly. My point is, there's so much opportunity to expand. How are you and your team in China thinking about the biggest cities that everybody knows of compared to all of these hundreds of cities that have a million plus people?

Joon Ooi3:41

Yeah, I think our strategy of growth is not from a unilateral perspective. I mean, we have a desire of which brands we want to introduce into different parts of any country, any market in Asia Pacific. But that is just our perspective of what we want. We have to layer on that the challenges or the realities of the different markets, what the owners in those markets want, what brands and what segments are the emerging trends or strong trends. So it's a blend of these two factors that we decide how and when we grow which brands to introduce.

Glenn4:17

Right. Yeah. So is there one particular brand in China that's more popular and one particular, let's say, Australia, New Zealand that might be more popular?

Joon Ooi4:25

Well, the Wyndham tier brands and Ramada tier brands continue to be strong favorites. Every year about 50% of our growth belongs to these two categories, and then the other third category is all the new brands that we are introducing. So these two brands still command about 50% share, still a very good favorite.

Glenn4:43

Yeah, for sure. Outside China, what's the fastest growing market or most exciting market you're seeing right now?

Joon Ooi4:49

Oh, that's a difficult question to answer.

Glenn4:51

Yeah, I know.

Joon Ooi4:54

Yeah, so many choices of answers. We're looking at Vietnam where we have a strong foothold and we have a strong pipeline as Vietnam has really grown in the last 15 years. It continues to grow, and especially when there's more, like a top inbound market is Korea and that's where we are strong as well. So we are able to bring customers from Korea into Vietnam and we have introduced a different brand to the different parts of Vietnam, not just in the main key cities but also in the coastal areas as well.

Glenn5:24

I think what I'm really drawing without you saying the words is that we're seeing that this middle class that has risen over the last 15, 20 years and hotels weren't necessarily catering to it. I feel like they were going into market to the high end of the market or the lowest end of the market. So I think you've got a lot of opportunity to expand all over. Is that observation correct?

Joon Ooi5:45

It is very correct. I mean, the middle class is a big, big, big segment and that's where a lot of the growth is going to be. You can see a lot of hotel brands shifting to the midscale level as well, and that's what we have been strong in and we will continue to grow in that area. So in line together with the consumer.

Glenn6:05

All right. So give me an example of one brand and something that you do that's really representative of cultural nuances in different destinations.

Joon Ooi6:13

Well, there are many answers to that, but I guess one good example is Microtel by Wyndham brand, where the brand is present in markets like Philippines, China, New Zealand. So depending on the market nuances and the market competitor profile as well, we adapt the brand to the different markets. But we just got to maintain the DNA of the brand but then adjust whether it's a hardware design or whether it's a service operational standards, what's being offered by each hotel in different markets. That's where the local adaptation comes in.

Glenn6:48

Really makes a whole lot of sense. Joon, this has been great talking to you. I really appreciate you giving me some time today.

Joon Ooi6:54

Likewise, Glenn. Thank you.

Glenn6:56

Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. This is great. Stick around for more of what's going on over here. Unless, of course, I decide to just quit it all and go for a ride up there on the high roller. We'll see you next time. Like, subscribe, share, all that kind of good stuff with Joon and myself. Bye, everybody.