Hyatt Hotels pays $148m for iconic Ventana Big Sur Resort

Geolo Capital, the private equity investment arm of the John Pritzker family office, and its joint-venture partner Wanxiang America Real Estate, have sold the iconic Ventana Big Sur, an Alila Resort, to an affiliate of the Hyatt Hotels Corp. for $148 million. The sale of the hotel in Big Sur, Calif., achieves a record $2.5 million per-key price for a North American resort, according to an analysis by Hodges Ward Elliott and Real Capital Analytics.

After acquiring Ventana in 2015 and leveraging its vertically integrated design and development, asset management and legacy hotel operating businesses, Geolo transformed the property into one of the most acclaimed and financially successful resorts in North America.

“We saw substantial unrealized value in controlling 59 of Big Sur’s 100 available full-service guestrooms and understood the potential to raise average daily rates following a comprehensive renovation, rebrand and repositioning,” said John Pritzker, Geolo f