NEW YORK and SEOUL—Lotte Hotels & Resorts and Highgate jointly announced a strategic partnership that will see Highgate assume management of the Lotte New York Palace Hotel, a 909-room luxury hotel. The Palace engagement is part of a broad collaboration between the two companies that includes hotel management, distribution, technology, and talent development across the Americas and Asia.
The Palace will continue to operate under the Lotte New York Palace flag, with Lotte retaining full ownership of the asset. Highgate will assume day-to-day operations, revenue management, sales, marketing, and labor relations functions, with on-property transition activity already underway.
Property Details
The property includes the Villard Houses. The 55-story modern tower opened in 1981 as New York City’s first true modern luxury hotel. Lotte Hotels & Resorts acquired the hotel in 2015 and rebranded the property as Lotte New York Palace Hotel. More recently, Lotte purchased the underlying land from the Archdiocese of New York. The hotel sits directly across Madison Avenue from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and steps from Rockefeller Center.
Strategic Partnership
The Palace engagement marks the start of a larger strategic partnership between the two organizations. Under the partnership framework, Lotte and Highgate intend to collaborate in several ways:
- Hotel collaboration across North America and Asia: The two firms will pursue joint operating opportunities across both regions. In North America, Highgate will serve as a preferred operating partner for additional Lotte-affiliated hotel assets as the company continues its expansion across the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. In Asia, Highgate will partner with Lotte on opportunities where Highgate’s lifestyle and luxury operating platforms and its principal investment capabilities can be deployed alongside Lotte’s operating depth and regulatory fluency.
- Global distribution: The companies will collaborate on global distribution across direct channels, group and wholesale, loyalty, and third-party intermediaries, with the goal of driving cross-market demand between Asian and Western source markets. The framework anticipates coordinated channeling of outbound Korean and broader Asian travel into Highgate’s gateway portfolios across the Americas and Europe, and reciprocal direction of North American and European demand into Lotte’s Asia-Pacific assets.
- Technology and AI in hospitality: Both firms have made hospitality technology a strategic priority, and the partnership establishes a structured framework to collaborate on the operating and guest-facing technology questions reshaping the industry. The companies will jointly develop and deploy next-generation revenue management and demand-forecasting systems. They will collaborate on artificial intelligence applications across the back-of-house and guest-facing personalization, including unified guest recognition and recommendation systems that operate seamlessly across both portfolios.
- Talent exchange and secondment: The two companies will establish a formal cross-training and secondment program, enabling executives and high-potential operators to rotate between Highgate and Lotte properties and corporate offices across markets.
Statement From Leadership
“Lotte is one of the great hospitality and consumer companies of our era, and the opportunity to build a long-term, multi-platform relationship with an organization of its caliber and ambition is rare,” said Richard Russo, principal at Highgate. “What gives this relationship its foundation are the core tenets that both companies share: an entrepreneurial, principal-led culture; a willingness to invest deeply in our people, in our technology, and in our operating discipline; and a commitment to building for the long term. We are deeply grateful that Lotte has entrusted the Lotte New York Palace Hotel, one of its most important assets, to our care. That responsibility is not lost on us, and the Palace is only the beginning of this work. The broader collaboration across hotels, distribution, technology, and the wider business ecosystems both companies bring is where the long-term value for both Highgate and Lotte will be created. We approach this significant partnership with excitement and admiration.”
