The region of Asia-Pacific excluding China (APEC) has delivered another year of growth and strategic expansion for Marriott International, marking the company’s third consecutive year of record-breaking development activity.
Marriott International APEC team signed a record 187 organic deals representing more than 28,000 rooms in 2025, a 32 per cent year-over-year increase.
Conversions continued to be a key growth engine, accounting for 35 per cent of total signed deals. Multi-unit agreements also contributed significantly, representing close to 30 per cent of total signings, reflecting growing appetite for owners to scale portfolios across markets and brand segments with a single hospitality platform.
Luxury remained a strategic focus in 2025 and accounted for approximately 19 per cent of 2025 organic rooms signings, with JW Marriott, The Ritz-Carlton, and Luxury Collection seeing the highest number of signed deals.
While Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan brought the greatest number of signings in 2025, India was a particularly bright spot for development. Marriott International saw a record signing of 99 deals representing over 12,000 rooms in India. It introduced Series by Marriott through a founding multi-unit deal in India, which resulted in the conversion of 26 hotels to the brand in a single day, adding approximately 1,900 rooms to its portfolio overnight. Operating as Fern Hotels & Resorts, Series by Marriott, the portfolio recorded 37 open properties in 23 Indian cities at the end of 2025.
The company opened 109 properties across the region in 2025, and closed the year with more than 730 open properties across 22 countries in APEC, spanning 27 brands, as well as more than 400 hotels and over 86,000 rooms in the development pipeline.
The APEC portfolio also showed growth across 2025 RevPar – up 8.4 per cent over 2024; average occupancy rate – up 1.5 per cent over 2024; and average daily rate – up 6.2 per cent over 2024.
Rajeev Menon, president, APEC, Marriott International, said: “Our record performance in 2025 underscores the strength of Marriott’s growth engine across the region and the enduring confidence our hotel owners place in our brands and operating platform. Sustained intra-regional and international travel demand and a diversified portfolio have enabled us to scale with purpose across markets, segments and development models.”
Menon, who led his leadership team on a performance preview on February 9 in Singapore, expressed confidence in continued growth through the new year.
“Growth for us has been phenomenal. We are now by a longshot the hospitality leader in APEC, well ahead of all our competitors. None of this growth is going to slow down,” he stated.
Gautham Bhandari, chief development officer for APEC, highlighted several notable openings for 2025, which marked brand debuts in both established and emerging markets. They include The Laurus, a Luxury Collection Resort, which led the brand’s entry into Singapore in October 2025, and Moxy Kathmandu, a lifestyle brand debut in Nepal in December 2025.
Bhandari emphasised that his team is “very focused on growing and growing with a purpose”.
“We want to be in destinations that our customers want, where our owners are developing, and which add value to our distribution and our portfolio as we move forward,” he added.
Menon stated that the region’s economic progress has a positive impact on travel consumption and tourism development.
“Due to investments in South-east Asia and South Asia from Western and Chinese sources, this region has seen a real emergence of the middle-class over the last six to eight years. These people are acquiring wealth, they are aspirational, they want to travel – all of which bode well for the world of hospitality,” he said.
Illustrating the value of intra-Asia travel, Menon shared that Marriott International’s APEC room night mix was dominated by APEC travellers in 2025 – the segment made up 56.4 per cent of the total. India (29 per cent), Japan (15 per cent), Australia (11 per cent), South Korea (nine per cent), and Indonesia (eight per cent), formed the top five APEC source markets of travellers.
“Once, we had to rely heavily on other parts of the world to bring travellers to our region. Today, almost 57 per cent of the business in our world is being generated in Asia-Pacific excluding China,” he stated.
The economic importance of Asia-Pacific can also be seen from the way global analysts are regarding the region. Menon noted that analysts used to look at how China’s activities were impacting the rest of Asia-Pacific a decade ago. In recent years, however, analysts have been reviewing APEC’s development as a standalone entity, and placing as much importance on the region when compared to China.
