Centara Hotels & Resorts plans to accelerate its international growth through multi-property deals signed with large property investors. Chief Operating Officer Michael Henssler told Skift the Thai operator is going more into an asset-light model, with outside investors owning the hotels its teams manage.
Centara sits inside Central Group, the retail conglomerate controlled by the Chirathivat family. Its brands run from Centara Reserve at the top through Centara Grand and Centara to Centara Life. Its hotels trade in the Maldives, Japan and the Middle East.
The Strategy Henssler Sets Out
Skift attributes to Henssler the reading that distressed assets and broken partnerships in the Gulf are openings. Centara states the two-track approach on its own corporate pages, describing an owned investment strategy alongside an asset-light strategy built on management contracts in Thailand and overseas.
The Owned and Managed Split
Central Plaza Hotel Public Company, the listed parent, filed its second-quarter 2026 management report on 92 hotels under management. Fifty-two hotels were operating, with 11,394 rooms. Forty hotels sat under development, with 8,507 rooms. The report classes 23 of the operating hotels, with 6,085 rooms, as owned and operated. The remaining 29 hotels, with 5,309 rooms, run under the company's hotel management agreements.
That puts 29 of 52 operating hotels, or 55.8 per cent, under management agreements. Skift's August count reads 52 hotels, with 23 owned or joint-venture and 29 managed, and 41 properties in the pipeline. The company's own filed pipeline figure at 30 June 2026 was 40 hotels.
Capital Recycling Pays for the Shift
The company's accounts show the funding route. Centara disposed of its joint-venture interest in Centara Osaka Tokutei Mokutei Kaisha on 27 March 2026 under a capital recycling strategy, and booked a share of gain of 1,076 million baht.
EBITDA for the first half of 2026 reached 4,809 million baht, up 40 per cent year on year. Net profit reached 2,309 million baht, up 169 per cent.
The Gulf Slump Henssler Calls an Opening
The company's own numbers show the size of the disruption. Revenue per available room at Centara Mirage Beach Resort Dubai fell 61 per cent year on year to 2,385 baht in the second quarter. Occupancy at that hotel dropped from 83 per cent to 44 per cent, and the average room rate fell 26 per cent to 5,403 baht.
The management report blames the situation in the Middle East since March 2026, which it says has continued to the present. The Dubai hotel stayed fully operational and took no physical damage, and holiday staycation demand supported its trade.
Group occupancy slipped from 66 per cent to 65 per cent. Revenue per available room rose 1 per cent once Dubai is excluded. Average room rates in Phuket fell after the Middle East disruption shifted the guest mix.
Two Reserve Hotels in the Portfolio
Centara announced Centara Reserve Krabi on 22 July 2026, and the resort opens in December 2026. It is the second property under the Reserve brand, and the group's earlier Reserve hotel is Centara Reserve Samui. Henssler called the Krabi launch a milestone in the company's long-term premium strategy.
Centara's corporate page counts more than 84 hotels in operation and in the pipeline across 12 countries as at December 2025. The list runs Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, the Maldives, Nepal, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Northern Cyprus, Turkey, Myanmar and Japan.
The Scale of the Contest
Skift frames scale as the constraint on the plan. Hilton puts its own portfolio at more than 9,400 properties, nearly 1.4 million rooms and 144 countries and territories, with more than 260 million Hilton Honors members, in its 30 September update.