US hotel group Hyatt, which has yet to open a single hotel in Sri Lanka 14 years after signing its first management agreement for a Colombo property, says it intends to enter through the capital and then expand to at least four or five destinations across the island.
The comments came from Hyatt’s Director Growth, India and Southwest Asia, Prakash V, speaking on a panel titled “Developing Paradise: The Next Wave of Hospitality Growth” at THINC Sri Lanka & Maldives 2026, hosted by Hotelivate-Savills at the Hilton Colombo last week, the Daily Mirror reported on Saturday.
He conceded the group has no presence in the country, but said its interest is serious.
“As of now, we have none. But our intention is very serious to this destination. We have identified a few opportunities which we’re hoping to bring into life. We will start with the gateway city and move on to at least four or five destinations, and you will hear that soon.”
Beyond Colombo, he named the Cultural Triangle — Anuradhapura, Sigiriya and Dambulla — as the most interesting proposition, followed by Bentota, Kandy, Trincomalee and Yala. Asked to pick the single brand from Hyatt’s portfolio best suited to Sri Lanka, he chose the Unbound Collection by Hyatt, its upper-upscale and luxury portfolio launched in 2016 in which each hotel retains a distinct character. The moderator observed that this was conveniently the brand already in Hyatt’s pipeline; Prakash neither confirmed nor denied it.
The tower he did not name
Prakash did not name a property. Hyatt’s longest-standing link to the “gateway city” is the unfinished 47-storey tower in Colombo 3 that the government is now trying to sell.
Hyatt signed a management agreement with state-owned Sinolanka Hotels and Spa in October 2012 for what was billed as Hyatt Regency Colombo, the brand’s first hotel in Sri Lanka. The project was later taken to Grand Hyatt specifications, but construction stalled with only the superstructure complete.
The tower holds 458 hotel rooms and 100 serviced apartments on 2.32 acres of oceanfront land. Sinolanka’s parent, Canwill Holdings, was established with Rs. 18.5 billion in equity from Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, Litro Gas and the Employees’ Provident Fund, and the project has absorbed over Rs. 20 billion of state funds.
Minister Nalinda Jayatissa told reporters in May 2025 that a further US$ 120 million, or around Rs. 36 billion, would be needed to finish it.
Two ratios in the report check out exactly, and both are worth stating in plain terms. Rs. 36 billion against the Rs. 20 billion already spent is 1.8 times the State’s outlay so far — the building needs almost twice again what it has already consumed. And US$ 120 million spread across all 558 keys, serviced apartments included, is about US$ 215,000 per key, before any purchase price is paid for the asset itself.
Where the sale stands
The divestiture has moved further under the present administration than in earlier attempts.
| Date | Step |
|---|---|
| May 2025 | Cabinet resolves to resume the suspended divestiture; Deloitte India retained as transaction advisor |
| 24 December 2025 | Finance Ministry issues Request for Expressions of Interest for the Government’s entire stake in Canwill Holdings |
| 16 March (extended deadline) | Eight parties respond |
| 12 August | Five named as pre-qualified bidders, cleared for the Request for Proposals stage |
The five are India’s Chalet Hotels and Juniper Hotels, a consortium of Phoenix Ventures and Bluestone Capital, Ceylon Steel Corporation, and a consortium of EML Consultants PLC and Italy’s Kimetal S.r.L. No timeline for the submission of proposals has been made public since.
One of the bidders is a Hyatt affiliate. Juniper Hotels is the largest owner of Hyatt-affiliated hotels in India by number of keys; at the time of its 2024 listing it operated 1,836 keys across seven properties, including the Grand Hyatt Mumbai Hotel and Residences. It is co-owned by the Saraf Group and Two Seas Holdings, a Hyatt affiliate.
That is the detail that gives Prakash’s remarks their weight. An executive saying the group will “start with the gateway city” is a statement of intent; an entity part-owned by a Hyatt affiliate sitting on the shortlist for the gateway city’s stalled Hyatt-branded tower is a route by which it could happen.
What bidders have asked about
At a pre-bid meeting in January, investors queried the validity of the agreements with Hyatt and whether tax holidays under Strategic Development Project status were still available. They also asked about the condition of the building’s lifts, escalators, electrical and plumbing systems — a tower that has stood incomplete for years carries depreciation on plant that was never commissioned.
The sale also covers Helanco Hotels & Spa, which holds 9.42 acres of beachfront leasehold land in Hambantota. Helanco signed with Hyatt in March 2014 to run a Hyatt Regency resort there, but its board abandoned the project in 2015 and the agreement has since lapsed. That is a second lapsed Hyatt agreement inside the same sale.
Canwill remains the only state enterprise divestiture the Government has taken forward. The sale of Hotel Developers (Lanka), which owns the Hilton Colombo, has been put on hold pending new policy direction, according to its annual report.
One figure moves inside the filing
The report gives Hyatt’s regional scale twice, and the two numbers differ. Early on it says the group operates 55 hotels across nine brands in India and Southwest Asia; later, quoting Prakash pitching owners in the room, it says Hyatt runs 56 hotels in Southwest Asia, predominantly in India, for just 14 owners — an average of four hotels each. The gap is a single property and the scopes may not be identical, so this is noted rather than treated as an error.
His advice to first-time hoteliers was blunter than his pitch. Commission a proper feasibility study rather than build a hotel for its own sake, he said: “Coming with a rendering is not a feasibility study.” Every project must pass its reality checks on financial returns. On choosing an operator, he argued trust is the deciding factor — “choose an operator where your heart says yes, this is the brand that I’m going to trust.”
Not reported
The report does not say whether the Hyatt management agreement for the Colombo tower is still in force — the question bidders themselves raised in January and the one that most affects what a buyer is actually acquiring. It gives no closing date for the RFP stage, no reserve or guide price, and no response from the Finance Ministry, Canwill Holdings or Hyatt’s corporate office to Prakash’s remarks. It does not say which of the “four or five destinations” are at the “identified opportunities” stage he referred to.
On sourcing: this is a Daily Mirror business report bylined to Nishel Fernando. At the time of writing, checks of the EconomyNext and Daily FT home pages returned no filing on the THINC panel or on the Canwill sale, so no corroborating verified newsroom was available.
