Why Brands Choose Developers: The Off-Plan Stakes

Revision notes#

This article was corrected on 27 September 2026. A check of its figures and attributions against the cited sources found errors, which have been corrected in the text. The full list, with what the article said and what it says now, is in the corrections section at the end.

This article was corrected on 29 September 2026. An earlier version described a scheme in Nungwi and its developer as linked to Greystone. That scheme, the Anantara resort and residences, is developed by a third party; Victaura's project in Nungwi is Secret Zanzibar Hotel & Villas. The article also described Victaura's positions, and the capital committed to them, beyond its public project pages; the text, and the disclosure at the end, now follow those pages.

The companion question to investor diligence#

A family office underwrites the developer before the asset. That is the institutional posture documented in the companion piece, What Investors Look for in a Developer. The five vectors there (track record, skin in the game, structural protection, alignment in the cap stack, exit) describe the work an LP does before signing.

The mirror question is rarely asked with the same precision. Why does a luxury hospitality or non-hotel brand put its name on a tower it does not own, on a site it has not bought, in a market it may not previously have operated in? The brand is making the same underwriting decision in the opposite direction. It is selecting a developer it can trust with its own equity, which in this case is not capital but reputation.

The two diligences converge. When a brand chooses a developer, the LP gets a co-signal the registry alone cannot produce. When the brand walks away, the LP learns something the brochure will not say. This article describes how the selection works from the brand's side, in 2025-2026.

The branded residences market, 2025 baseline#

Branded residences are no longer a niche product. Savills, in its Branded Residences Report 2025-26, records global supply rising from 323 schemes in 2015 to approximately 910 by end-2025, with 837 contracted projects in pipeline through 2032. Year-on-year growth from December 2024 to December 2025 ran at 19 per cent. In 2025, 25 countries opened their first branded residential project, 39 new hotel brands entered the segment, and 19 new non-hotel brands followed them in.

Knight Frank's Global Branded Residence Survey 2025 frames the same expansion on a longer arc. Schemes rose from 169 in 2011 to 611 today by Knight Frank's count, with a forecast of 1,019 by 2030. The survey assessed portfolios of nearly 80 luxury brands across 83 countries. Hotel brands account for 83 per cent of existing branded residences, and the share of hotel-brand schemes co-located with a hotel falls from 82 per cent of live schemes to 70 per cent of the pipeline.

Regional growth is uneven. Savills records Asia Pacific expansion at 55 per cent over five years and Middle East and North Africa growth at 187 per cent. Standalone branded residences (schemes without an attached hotel) account for 33 per cent of the global pipeline in the Savills count, against 67 per cent mixed-use. Knight Frank finds 82 per cent of live hotel-brand schemes co-located with a hotel, falling to 70 per cent in the pipeline. Operators are treating residential as a primary line of business, not a hospitality by-product. Selection of the right developer is the operator's central commercial decision in this segment.

What the brand actually licenses#

The license is more than a name on the door. Goodwin's 2024 note on branded residence structuring describes a license to use the brand's name and marks, services to owners and associations, and terms of access to hotel amenities. The four-part breakdown below is a Victaura Research reading of common practice, not a Goodwin framework.

Marks and naming rights. The right to market and sell the residences under the brand name and registered marks, in specified language territories, for the duration of the agreement. The brand approves marketing collateral, prospectus and contract wording, and third-party endorsements.

Design and construction standards. Detailed brand standards for FF&E (furniture, fixtures and equipment), MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing), public-area finishes, BOH (back of house) configuration, and unit specifications. The developer is bound to deliver to those standards, with brand technical services reviewing drawings at predetermined stages.

Service protocols. Where the brand or an affiliate provides ongoing residential management, SOPs cover concierge, security, housekeeping, maintenance, owner services and (where relevant) hotel-residence integration, at a level of granularity comparable to a hotel brand standard manual.

Access to the network. Loyalty program participation, owner privileges across the brand's hotel estate, vendor lists, and marketing distribution through the brand's owned channels. For non-hotel brands such as Bentley and Aston Martin, the network value sits in the brand's clientele list and HNW media footprint rather than a hotel reservation system.

The package is asset-light from the brand's side. Bulgari, acquired by LVMH in 2011, runs its hotels through a joint venture with Marriott that dates from the brand's entry into hotels in the early 2000s (Skift, 2023), and illustrates the model. Bulgari does not own its hotels. It receives royalties for use of its marks and exercises strict design and service control. Marriott runs the operating company against the standard. Real-estate partners own the assets and carry the development risk. This is the operating grammar of the segment.

The five developer selection criteria from the brand's perspective#

The brand underwrites reputational equity, not financial equity. That distinction shapes the selection function inside the brand. The diligence map below is a Victaura Research assumption, not a list published by any brand, and it resolves to five criteria.

Balance sheet and capitalisation depth. The brand needs to know the developer can fund the project through completion under stress. The test is not the announced capital structure at signing but the capacity to inject equity if construction runs over, debt markets close, or pre-sales soften. A developer whose balance sheet is paper-thin cannot survive a one-year delay without rescue financing, and rescue financing is the moment brand standards typically erode. The brand reads audited accounts, group consolidation and ultimate beneficial owner disclosures before the pitch deck.

Track record of finished product to standard. Evidence that the developer has delivered prior projects to comparable specification, on a defensible timeline, with handover documentation that survives a post-occupancy audit. The metric mirrors institutional LP practice: delivered over announced, time-to-completion against plan, number of projects abandoned or transferred. No published brand standard in the sources consulted sets a delivery threshold; the weight given to delivery here is a Victaura Research assumption.

Location and product-market fit. Ritz-Carlton goes where Ritz-Carlton clientele already travels. Aman goes where the aesthetic finds its natural setting (remote, scenic, low-density). EDITION goes where a younger luxury demographic concentrates. The brand reads air access, prime residential price band, scarcity of comparable supply, and political-regulatory stability. A misfit between brand and location compounds reputational risk regardless of execution quality.

Market positioning and pricing discipline. In Victaura Research's reading, brands commonly seek approval rights over launch pricing, phased release schedules and discounting strategy; the sources consulted do not measure how often these rights are granted. A developer that signals willingness to discount aggressively to clear inventory is signalling dilution of the brand's positioning at resale.

Legal jurisdiction and exit-clause enforceability. The brand needs to walk away cleanly if the developer breaches. That requires contract law that recognises the brand's termination rights, courts or an arbitral seat that enforce them on a workable timeline, and a trademark registry that defends the marks after exit. Where any of these are weak, the deal is structured around them (typically arbitration in London, Singapore or Paris, and a brand-protective sub-license entity).

License vs Manage, the economics of LDA and HMA#

Two contractual structures govern the brand's role. The License & Development Agreement (LDA) covers the development and sales phase. The Hotel Management Agreement (HMA), where the residence is co-located with a hotel or where the brand operates residential common areas, covers the ongoing operational phase. The fee ranges below come from the DLA Piper Hotel Management Agreements country handbooks, HVS (2020), Hotels Investment and Cornell Real Estate Review (2019).

LDA economics. The brand receives a license fee on each residence sold. Hotels Investment puts it at around 5 per cent of gross sales, with fees for marketing and technical services layered on top, and Cornell Real Estate Review (2019) reported average marketing license fees of around 2 to 5 per cent of gross income. Goodwin (2024) notes that part of the fee is typically paid at the outset of the deal and the balance on closings. Fee levels vary by brand and market, and the sources consulted publish no brand-by-brand schedule.

HMA economics, where the brand operates. A base fee of 2.5 to 4 per cent of gross revenue for branded management, against 2 to 3 per cent for non-branded third-party management (DLA Piper, United States chapter). An incentive fee on GOP (gross operating profit) or AGOP (adjusted GOP), often subordinated to an owner priority return: DLA Piper gives 8 to 12 per cent of GOP for Germany and 8 to 10 per cent for Austria, while HVS (2020) describes a historical 8 to 10 per cent, with newer contracts starting at 5 per cent and rising to 9 per cent. System and centralised services fees cover reservation, marketing, loyalty and accounting platforms. Technical services apply during construction; pre-opening fees during ramp.

The fee aggregate is material to underwriting. A project paying 5 per cent license + 2 per cent marketing on sales, plus 3 per cent base + 10 per cent incentive on the residential opco, is carrying a brand load the premium must cover. Savills 2025-26 puts the global average premium of branded residences over comparable non-branded product at 33 per cent, with 30 per cent in urban and 39 per cent in resort locations. That premium has to absorb the fee load and leave the developer net positive against opportunity cost.

The reputational risk to the brand#

One failed project is not one isolated loss. The brand carries the reputational consequence across its entire portfolio. A scheme that delivers late, off-standard, or in a market downturn becomes a public reference point prospective buyers in every other city in the brand's portfolio can search and find. The press cycle does not distinguish between operator, owner and developer when the photograph of the half-finished tower appears.

The asymmetry shapes the brand's diligence depth. A developer is exposed to financial loss on a single project, capped by equity at risk. The brand, in Victaura Research's reading, is exposed to a multi-year effect on forward sales velocity across every other branded development in its pipeline, an effect no source consulted here measures. The loss functions are not comparable, and the brand's selection conservatism is the consequence.

Public examples are instructive. The Trump Organization operated, by the 2010s, a wide network of branded properties on licensing rather than ownership models. Where licensees encountered financial distress or political headwind, some properties dropped the name, as the two cases below show. Trump SoHo, a collaboration between the Trump Organization, Bayrock Group and Tamir Sapir, was renamed The Dominick in December 2017 after the Trump Organization's exit. In Vancouver, where Holborn Group licensed the Trump brand from 2013, the hotel closed in August 2020, the residential strata rebranded itself as 1151 Residences, and the TRUMP letters over the entrance came down in December 2021 (Daily Hive).

The structural point is contractual. Branded agreements increasingly contain brand exit clauses (also drafted as brand termination triggers) entitling the brand to withdraw the marks if the developer breaches standard, or residents to require removal if the association becomes prejudicial to property value. How widespread the clause is cannot be measured from public sources; its presence in well-drafted LDAs is a Victaura Research assumption. The harder case is silent termination, where brand and developer part without public announcement and the marks come down with a generic repositioning line. The institutional buyer therefore interrogates a developer's prior brand relationships through Companies House, court records, and trademark registry inspection rather than through the developer's curated reference list.

Brand exit clauses and trigger events#

A well-drafted LDA, in Victaura Research's reading, contains five principal termination triggers. Each is independently enforceable and prices a different risk the brand identified at signing.

Payment default. The developer fails to pay the upfront fee, sales-completion tranches, or marketing-fund contributions within agreed cure periods. Mechanical and judicially uncontested.

Brand standard breach. The developer departs materially from agreed design, construction or service standards. Drafting practice has converged on a graduated remedies scale (non-conformance notice, formal cure notice, termination notice) to reduce litigation risk.

Ownership change in the developer. Transfer of control to a party not previously approved by the brand. The brand carries a change of control consent right, with consent not to be unreasonably withheld but with a defined list of acceptable transferees (institutional sponsors, public companies, sovereign wealth) and exclusion of sanctioned persons, criminal-record principals and politically exposed persons over a threshold. No public data measures how often it is invoked.

Reputational event. The developer, its principals, or its controlling owners become the subject of an event that the brand reasonably determines, on advice of counsel, materially impairs the brand. Drafted with deliberate generality (criminal indictment, sanctions designation, public investigation, mass media scandal). Most likely to surface in disputed terminations because the brand's discretion has to be exercised in good faith and is reviewable on that ground.

Cross-default and force-majeure interplay. Default under senior credit, escrow obligation or planning consent triggers automatic cure-and-termination. Force majeure suspends rather than terminates (with caps), to avoid loss of rights through events neither party caused.

Reading the LDA as an LP. Request executed brand agreements, redacted for confidentiality, and read the termination article. Presence of all five triggers with workable cure periods signals a mature counterparty. Absence or weakness signals a developer not put through real brand diligence.

Skin in the game on both sides#

The implicit due diligence runs in both directions. The developer contributes capital. The brand contributes reputation. Each has skin in the game in its own currency, and each is entitled to be selective.

From the brand's side, three commitments are made. Senior technical services capacity allocated from design review through opening. Marketing and distribution channel capacity from launch through sell-out. Exposure of registered marks for the duration of the agreement, with the asymmetric reputational consequence already described. A brand that accepts every developer that approaches is signalling its selection function has weakened.

From the developer's side, the commitment matches the institutional norm in the companion article. Cash co-investment at deal level, held as equity in the project SPV and disclosed in subscription documents. A developer that asks a brand to commit reputation while the developer commits no cash of its own is asking the brand to be the senior party in the alignment, an inversion that, in Victaura Research's reading, sophisticated brands decline.

Greystone B.V. disclosure. Victaura, through its parent Greystone B.V. (Netherlands), is itself a developer, and its positions are set out in the disclosure at the end of this article. Its project in Nungwi, Zanzibar, is Secret Zanzibar Hotel & Villas, a boutique hotel and serviced residences. The Anantara Zanzibar Resort & Residences in the same area, discussed in the next section, is developed by a third party, Infinity Developments.

Famous pairings, dynamics analysed#

Bulgari, LVMH and Marriott. Bulgari was acquired by LVMH in 2011 and operates its hotel and residential brand through a joint venture with Marriott International dating from the brand's entry into hotels in the early 2000s (Skift, 2023). Bulgari does not own the hotels. It receives royalties for use of its marks and exercises strict design control. Marriott runs the operating company against the standard. Real-estate partners own the assets. Skift counted nine hotels open and three in development (Maldives, Bodrum, Miami Beach) in December 2024. The contrarian dimension is the conscious refusal of aggressive expansion, no Marriott loyalty points, and a small absolute footprint. Selectivity is itself a brand position; the developer partners are correspondingly few and reputationally consolidated.

Aman and the Doronin developer-led model. Aman Resorts was sold by DLF in 2014 for USD 358 million to an investment company led by Vladislav Doronin. The brand has since pursued an urban strategy, with hotels in Tokyo (2014), New York (2022) and Bangkok, and Miami Beach and Dubai listed as planned (Wikipedia, as of September 2026). A USD 900 million equity infusion from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Cain International in August 2022 valued the group at approximately USD 3 billion. The structural feature is that the brand owner, through OKO Group and related vehicles, is also a principal developer. The selection question is internalised. At the time of the 2022 investment, Aman counted 34 hotels across 20 countries, 12 of them with Aman Branded Residences (The National).

Anantara and the Minor Hotels platform. Anantara was launched in 2001 by Minor Hotels under William E. Heinecke's leadership. Minor describes a portfolio of over 560 hotels and resorts across six continents (Minor Hotels, 2026). Residential expansion has been measured: The Residences by Anantara at Layan, Phuket (15 ultra-luxury pool residences) and, in April 2026, Anantara Miami Resort & Residences with One Thousand Group, a 50-storey Edgewater tower (100 branded condos, 120 resort residences, 50 hotel suites, opening 2030). In Zanzibar, the Anantara Zanzibar Resort in Nungwi (181 keys including 70 apartments, opening 2027, per the project site) is developed by Infinity Developments; the sources consulted do not document how Minor selected the developer.

Mandarin Oriental and the Jardine anchor. Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group is a subsidiary of Mandarin Oriental International Limited, itself part of Jardine Matheson. In October 2025, Jardine Matheson, already the majority shareholder, announced a bid for the remaining 11.96 per cent of Mandarin Oriental at a USD 4.2 billion valuation (Travel Market Report), and took full control in 2026 (Wikipedia, as of September 2026). At the announcement the group managed 43 hotels and 12 branded residences across 27 countries. The selection signal is the inverse of the Aman model: the brand's ultimate parent provides the institutional anchor, and developer counterparties are chosen against a balance-sheet test the parent group is itself comfortable with.

The pattern. Bulgari relies on Marriott's developer-network discipline. Aman internalises the developer function under common ownership. Anantara works through Minor's platform with selected partners. Mandarin Oriental relies on Jardine's institutional reach. There is no single right answer, but a single right question: can this developer deliver this product to this standard in this jurisdiction without putting the brand at risk.

What this means for the LP and the buyer#

The brand is a co-signal, not a substitute for diligence. When a brand attaches its name to a development, it is publishing the result of its own selection function on the developer. The LP that reads the brand's presence as a green light on the developer is misreading the signal. The LP that reads it as one data point alongside the institutional diligence vectors is reading it correctly.

Structural protection still has to come from the host jurisdiction. Italy's Legislative Decree 122/2005 fideiussione, Dubai's Law 8/2007 escrow regime, administered through RERA, Indonesia's PPAT and AJB regime: these are the buyer's protection mechanisms regardless of which brand is on the door. The brand controls quality. The statute controls remedy. Both are required.

Exit matters more in branded products, not less. Because the brand has its own exit triggers, the LP and the off-plan buyer both carry residual risk that the brand walks during build-out or shortly after handover. The diligence question to the developer is: what is the project's value, and what is my position as a buyer, if the mark comes down before completion? A clean answer with a worked example is the answer of an operator who has thought about it.

For the long-term buyer. A branded residence ties the owner to a brand standard over the long term. Standard maintenance, the loyalty network, and the marketing footprint are the channels through which a brand can support resale velocity and rental yield; the sources consulted here do not measure that effect. Savills 2025-26 puts the global average premium over comparable non-branded product at 33 per cent. The buyer who pays the premium is paying for brand-standard maintenance and network access; whether that justifies the price depends on the developer and the brand, and the sources consulted do not settle it.

The closing point#

The brand chooses the developer with the same care the developer chooses the brand. The selection is mutual. The currencies are different. The diligence vectors converge. When both sides have done the work, the product is better placed over the cycle. When either side has compromised, the failure is rarely silent.

Read the documents. Verify the registries. Triangulate the brand's selection logic against the developer's track record and the host jurisdiction's statutory protection. Treat the brand's presence as confirmation, not as a substitute. Underwrite the deal as if the brand could exit, and price it as if the developer might fail. The deal that survives both tests is the deal worth doing.

Skin in the game disclosure. Victaura, through its parent Greystone B.V. (Netherlands), develops projects on Lake Como (Italy), in Nungwi, Zanzibar (Tanzania), on Gili Air and in Uluwatu, Bali (Indonesia), and holds an off-plan capital position on Al Marjan Island, Ras Al Khaimah (UAE). Readers should assume commentary may be influenced by, or benefit, these positions. This document is classified as marketing material under MiFID II Article 24(3). It is not investment advice.

Corrections, 27 September 2026#

What the article said and what it says now. The published version gave a brand license fee of 3 to 8 per cent of gross sales, with Marriott at 5 to 6 per cent and Viceroy at 4 to 5 per cent, attributed to Hospitality Investor and Goodwin; none of the sources that could be opened carries those figures, so the article now cites Hotels Investment (around 5 per cent of gross sales, with marketing and technical fees on top) and Cornell Real Estate Review (average marketing license fees of 2 to 5 per cent of gross income). It described a four-part Goodwin licensing framework that the Goodwin note does not contain; that breakdown is now labelled as a Victaura Research reading. It gave the Savills average branded premium as about 30 per cent within a 15 to 60 per cent range; Savills 2025-26 reports 33 per cent, 30 per cent urban and 39 per cent resort. It credited Knight Frank with brand rankings (Ritz-Carlton first, Four Seasons second, Aman at 68 per cent and Six Senses at 67 per cent of portfolio in pipeline) and Savills with a historical 70 per cent hotel co-location norm; the rankings could not be found in the Knight Frank pages that could be opened and have been removed, and the 70 per cent is Knight Frank's pipeline share of hotel-brand schemes co-located with a hotel, against 82 per cent for live schemes. It said Bulgari had 22 operational properties and 14 in development by 2024 (Skift); Skift reported nine hotels open and three in development in December 2024. It said a London High Court ruling confirmed Doronin's sole ownership of Aman in 2016 and listed Mexico City among Aman's urban locations; neither is supported by the cited source, and the text now follows Wikipedia (DLF sold Aman for USD 358 million in 2014; Tokyo, New York and Bangkok open, Miami Beach and Dubai planned). It gave Minor Hotels 57 countries; Minor's own site states over 560 hotels and resorts across six continents. It presented the Jardine Matheson take-private of Mandarin Oriental as an announcement; Jardine, already the majority owner, bid for the remaining 11.96 per cent in October 2025 and took full control in 2026. HMA base and incentive fee ranges are now attributed to the specific DLA Piper country chapters and HVS (2020), and HMA terms of 20 to 30 years are replaced with the HVS global average of 18.3 years. The Vancouver example now states that 1151 Residences is the residential strata's name after the Trump hotel closed in August 2020. Dubai's Law 8/2007 is no longer described as a UAE law. Statements on brand selection criteria and termination triggers that had no source, including a 5 to 20 per cent co-investment band and a claim that Cornell and the Urban Land Institute set a delivery threshold, are now marked as Victaura Research assumptions or removed.

A further review on the same day refined some of the corrections above and fixed further points. A second check against the cited sources found further points to correct. The article listed Bulgari among non-hotel brands alongside Bentley and Aston Martin; Bulgari runs nine hotels through its joint venture with Marriott (Skift, December 2024), so it has been removed from that list. The HMA stat placed DLA Piper's note that incentive fees are often subordinated to an owner's priority return next to the German 8 to 12 per cent figure; that note comes from DLA Piper's United States chapter, and the label now says so. The article stated that brands routinely require approval rights over launch pricing and discounting, that residents and condo boards applied sustained pressure to remove Trump branding, that brand exposure works as a multi-year multiplier on sales velocity, and that sophisticated brands decline deals without developer cash; none of the cited sources supports these statements, so they are now marked as Victaura Research assumptions or reworded to what the Trump SoHo (Wikipedia) and Vancouver (Daily Hive) cases show. It described Anantara's choice of Infinity Developments in Zanzibar as consistent with a pattern of verifiable developer track record; no source documents how Minor selected the developer, and the text now gives only the project facts from the Anantara Zanzibar project site (181 keys including 70 apartments, opening 2027). Two sentences presenting the branded premium as a justified price have been replaced with a statement that the sources consulted do not measure that effect.