While putting the words “luxury” and "all-inclusive" together seems paradoxical, the industry is evolving and the concept is getting more and more attention. Luxury all-inclusive hospitality is attracting capital and delivering strong performance as the wider luxury market warms to the removal of transaction points over the course of the holiday.
Using Hyatt as an example, its Inclusive Collection now comprises more than 150 resorts and over 55,000 rooms across Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe, with latest additions including assets acquired through Playa Hotels & Resorts and resorts brought into the system through its joint venture with Grupo Piñero. Comparable system-wide all-inclusive resorts Net Package RevPAR grew 8.6 per cent in 2025 and increased a further 7.4 per cent year on year in the first quarter of 2026.
On a smaller scale, at the ten-villa Nay Palad Hideaway, a member of The Set Collection in the Philippines, a guest can wake at midday and still ask for breakfast. They can book multiple massages in one day, take a boat to a neighbouring island, return for dinner on the beach and leave without reviewing a bill. And the resort on Siargao does not impose supplements or allowances to discourage such behaviour.
Delivering on the promise
However, the model’s economics depend on more than bundling meals, drinks and activities into the room rate in the same way as the traditional all-inclusive model which revolves around standardisation and being value-led. At the upper end, developers and operators are selling freedom.
“It’s less about exclusivity for its own sake and more about effortless, meaningful experiences. A thoughtfully designed luxury all-inclusive experience removes friction rather than choice,” says Maria Zarraluqui, global development lead for Hyatt’s Inclusive Collection.
Nay Palad goes further than most. Its published proposition promises that guests will not need a wallet, with dining, activities and adventures incorporated into the stay. Doing away with the term “all-inclusive”, co-founder Herve Lampert instead describes the product as “freedom-included”, noting that that concept emerged from years spent travelling with co-founder & former footballer Bobby Dekeyser and repeatedly encountering check-in queues, signatures, card payments and lengthy bills.
“There’s nothing worse than going back to the checkout and starting to discuss: was it two bottles of champagne or three? Was it one massage or two? We wanted to remove all these barriers and give a seamless experience” he said.
“We wanted to remove all these barriers and give a seamless experience. When you leave, it should be like leaving family. You say goodbye, hug and reminisce about the moments you had.”
One of the cons bandied about by critics though is that removing each transaction also removes opportunities to manage demand through pricing and to drive ancillary spending.
But Lampert says this isn’t necessarily an issue. At the time of the interview, Nay Palad’s rates started at $980 per person per night. Lampert said the resort calculates the rate by combining fixed costs with expected variable expenditure, dividing the total by available guest capacity and adding a margin. Consumption is then managed across the full guest base rather than stay by stay.
“One guest can be drinking all day long and another guest can be on the boat,” he said. “At the end of a week, a month or a year, the cost is balancing itself.”
The model relies on the law of averages. Not every guest will request several treatments a day or repeatedly use the resort’s most expensive activities. Some will surf while others will spend much of the day by the pool. Crucially, Nay Palad does not use dynamic pricing. It sets low-, high- and peak-season rates, generally fixing them for a year, with rates able to be reset annually.
However, he confesses maintenance of boats used for island trips and fuel are substantial expenses, with scheduling is also complicated by the promise of personalisation: separate groups may want boats simultaneously but the resort tries to avoid sending several sets of guests to the same beach or surf break.
The economic case therefore depends on pricing sufficient flexibility into the package from the outset. Cutting inclusions after arrival may reduce cost in the short term, but it risks destroying the trust on which the premium is based.
Does size matter?
Scale is one of the most important distinctions between Nay Palad’s model and that of a global operator.
Hyatt runs all-inclusive resorts with hundreds of rooms. Zarraluqui said these properties are highly complex assets requiring specialist operating expertise, distribution, relationships with tour operators and airlines, and a balance between rooms and sufficient restaurants, pools, wellness facilities and entertainment venues.
“All-inclusive is a highly specialised operating model. Consistently delivering on that promise requires strong brands that bring deep operational expertise, careful planning, the right distribution engine and the ability to orchestrate every element of the guest experience seamlessly,” Zarraluqui says.
Lampert, by contrast, believes Nay Palad’s success and degree of personalisation is inseparable from its limited size.
He estimated that the concept should remain below 30 keys. Ten villas may be slightly undersized from a financial perspective, he acknowledged, with between 25 and 30 keys potentially providing a better balance between intimacy and operating viability.
“I truly believe it is dependent on being ten or 20 keys. Then the team is fully focused and you can highly personalise the service and give the impression to the guests that everybody is there for them.”
But a challenge is labour intensity. A highly flexible resort needs to gather detailed guest information before arrival, arrange suggested itineraries, react quickly to changing requests and continually create new experiences. With this system, long stays can be a challenge. Lampert describes a guest staying for 29 days, requiring the team to find fresh activities several weeks into the visit. That level of improvisation is hard to scale. It depends on employees having local knowledge, confidence and authority instead of just following standard operating procedures.
All of this indicates that success of the all-inclusive luxury model is not dependent on one operating format but rather, lies on a spectrum. At one end, large, branded resorts use sophisticated distribution, loyalty systems, multiple outlets and carefully structured packages to support scale. At the other, small independents can charge a significant premium for flexibility, privacy and deeply individual service. The common factor is that the physical asset and operating model must be designed together.
Zarraluqui said Hyatt first assesses location, airlift, source markets, seasonality, site quality and future demand. It then considers whether the scale and amenity mix can support the expected guest volume without diluting the experience. A prime beach can strengthen the proposition but she says the model can also work in a broader range of well-connected leisure destinations than investors may assume, provided they offer a strong sense of place through culture, food or nature.
Removing the upsell
All-inclusive also changes the relationship between guests and staff and can allow the guest enjoy full immersion into the destination’s language, communities, landscape and culture as the staff have no obligation to upsell.
Without upselling opportunities Nay Palad says it generates value through retention and referrals. Lampert says repeat guests represent between 24 per cent to 30 per cent of business, higher than the founders originally expected for an ultra-luxury clientele with the means and inclination to visit a different destination each year.
“The incremental revenue comes from delivering the most magical experience possible, and people will come back. If they don’t come back, maybe they send friends to us,” he says.
The resort also regularly introduces new boats, spa facilities, dining locations and nature-based activities to give returning guests something different. Its dining programme, for example, moves guests between beaches, treehouses, pagodas and terraces, while menus are built around available ingredients and individual dietary preferences.
For Hyatt, loyalty operates on a much larger platform. Zarraluqui said 4.3 million resort guests had enrolled in World of Hyatt following an all-inclusive stay since the company acquired Apple Leisure Group in 2021. The all-inclusive portfolio essentially acts as an entry point into the wider Hyatt ecosystem.
It seems with all-inclusive luxury, larger platforms can create efficiencies through scale while smaller properties can find real success by rejecting it. Both depend on delivering enough value upfront that guests stop evaluating every individual component.