Jason Zvatora of OUTRIGGER Resorts & Hotels on Cultural Authenticity, Commercial Strategy, and Building the World's Most Iconic Beachfront Brand

OUTRIGGER Resorts & Hotels has been doing what the rest of the hospitality industry is now scrambling to claim — culturally rooted, place-specific, experience-led travel — since 1947. Jason Zvatora, Vice President of Commercial Strategy and Performance for the APAC and Indian Ocean portfolio, sat down with Adam Mogelonsky to explain how a brand born on Waikiki Beach became a global leader in beachfront resort hospitality, and why staying true to that origin story is the engine of its commercial performance.

The conversation covers a lot of ground: the philosophy behind what OUTRIGGER calls "the Outrigger Way," the mechanics of balancing family and romance personas in the same resort, a $450 million global reinvestment programme, an ambitious approach to AI-optimised content, the brand's response to the disruption caused by the conflict in the Middle East, and a clear-eyed vision for growth through 2030.

What is the elevator pitch for OUTRIGGER Resorts & Hotels?

OUTRIGGER is a leisure brand, and it leads with that identity without apology. Every property is either beachfront or set within a beach community — there is no corporate base, no conference-heavy city hotel hiding in the portfolio. With an average length of stay of 5.5 nights across its properties, the brand is built for guests who come to immerse themselves, not pass through. 

What separates OUTRIGGER from the crowded field of resort brands is what Zvatora calls cultural authenticity — and critically, he means it at the property level, not the brand level. "Our culture is so much better in application than it is on paper," he says, "and not many companies can say that."

The mechanism is what the brand calls the Outrigger Way: caring for guests, caring for hosts, and caring for place. When OUTRIGGER enters a new destination, the first work done is on sense of place — what does this brand mean here, in this specific location, with this specific culture? The Hawaiian properties embrace Hawaiian culture and programming; the Fiji resorts are shaped around the Bula spirit and were architecturally designed as a Fijian chiefly village; the forthcoming Phi Phi Island property will feature a luxury long-tail boat experience, drawing directly on a centuries-old mode of Thai transport.

"When you allow your hosts to be the best version of themselves," Zvatora says, "they provide the best level of service and differentiate it to our guests."

Hosts, not staff

One word choice says a lot about the brand's operating philosophy. OUTRIGGER does not have staff. It has hosts.

"Some may say it's wordplay," Zvatora acknowledges, "but it's more than that. We host our guests, and our hosts enable that to occur." The framing shifts the mindset for everyone who works at an OUTRIGGER property: guests and hosts alike arrive as part of a team, part of a family. It is not a marketing line so much as an operational orientation that shapes hiring, training, and service delivery across the entire portfolio.

Who are the guests?

Two personas dominate the OUTRIGGER guest profile. The first is the family traveller — but not the kind that drops children at kids club and retreats to a sun lounger. "Our family persona is really about connection," Zvatora explains. "Reconnecting the family, leaving their busy lives behind and immersing themselves in the culture." This covers both multi-generational families and families with young children, each requiring a slightly different delivery.

The second is the honeymoon and romance traveller — a natural fit given that OUTRIGGER operates in Thailand, Mauritius, the Maldives, and Hawaii, among the world's most popular honeymoon destinations.

Balancing these two personas within the same property is a design and programming challenge the brand takes seriously. Wellness and spa areas are clustered with couples-oriented villas and suites, while family programming and children's pool areas are deliberately positioned to allow both guest types to coexist without compromise. The resort's "way-finding" — how guests physically journey through the property, what they see and experience along the way — is mapped out explicitly around these two key personas.

Source market diversity follows naturally from the portfolio's geography. Hawaii draws heavily from domestic US, Australian, New Zealand, and Japanese travellers. In the Maldives, no single source market exceeds 10% of the overall mix, spanning the UK, Germany, China, Korea, Switzerland, Austria, and beyond. "It makes the job incredibly interesting, challenging, and rewarding at the same time," Zvatora says.

Innovation: technology as a vehicle for face time

OUTRIGGER's approach to innovation is grounded in a clear operating principle: technology exists to free up host time so that more of it can be spent with guests, not less. "We see technology as a vehicle for us to provide more face-to-face time," Zvatora says.

Beyond that, the brand does not sit still. The headline example is the Cirque du Soleil residency at the Waikiki property — a world-class entertainment show housed in what was a ballroom, now a fully fitted amphitheater. In Thailand, fire dancers perform exclusive beachside shows for guests roughly once a week, drawing almost 90% attendance among guests staying at the property. In Fiji, a tribe from Vanuatu performs the traditional firewalking ceremony in an outdoor amphitheater built specifically for the purpose.

On the hard side, the brand is midway through a $450 million global reinvestment programme focused on design, refurbishment, and repositioning. The wellness build-out is the other major initiative underway: OUTRIGGER is moving from spa as an amenity to fully integrated wellness as an experience, encompassing arrival programming, in-room elements, F&B, activities, and a dedicated wellness clinic. "This is not having a nice spa," Zvatora says. "This is integrating it from arrival, all the way through to F&B, programming around the resort." The Maldives property is the furthest along this journey, where a dedicated host manages the entire stay of each wellness guest and follows up post-departure.

The commercial picture: TRevPAR, not just RevPAR

Roughly 46% of OUTRIGGER's APAC revenue comes from rooms. The other 54% comes from food and beverage, spa, activities, and ancillary spend — a ratio that fundamentally shapes how the commercial team thinks.

"Sometimes I'll strategically lose the RevPAR game to win the TRevPAR game," Zvatora says. Certain source markets spend up to three times more on property than others, and OUTRIGGER's data infrastructure is built to identify and act on that. The brand runs Duetto as its revenue management system, maintains a full business intelligence platform accessible to everyone in the organisation, and benchmarks internally and externally through STR and HotStats down to the P&L level.

Distribution is managed across an omni-channel approach — brand-direct, OTAs, and a robust travel agent programme that Zvatora treats as a genuine partnership rather than a legacy obligation. The OUTRIGGER Expert Agent Programme now has approximately 13,500 trained advocates, each of whom earns points redeemable for stays and whose referred guests receive a personalised gift on arrival from their agent. "They're the first to give us feedback when we need to focus on a certain area," he says. "They're very quick to come back and tell us all their guest stories."

Loyalty: the guest who cried leaving Castaway Island

At the Outrigger Castaway Island Resort in Fiji, approximately 45% of guests return every year. Some book the same room before they leave. "That emotional connection — that is instant loyalty," Zvatora says. "Why would I go anywhere else when I've got this authentic, beautiful experience and my whole family's been taken care of on every aspect?"

Formal loyalty is managed through GHA Discovery, a programme with around 34 million members across multiple brands. Zvatora values the programme specifically because it prioritises local experiences — a natural match for OUTRIGGER's brand positioning. Of the loyalty-driven business the brand generates, about 30% represents guests moving between OUTRIGGER properties across different destinations, cycling through Thailand, Fiji, and Hawaii rather than returning to the same property each time.

AI search and content strategy

LLM-driven search referrals to OUTRIGGER's website are growing on what Zvatora describes as a hockey-stick curve — still a small absolute number, but converting at a notably high rate. "If you think about AI or LLMs providing so much information, they're getting a bit closer to a purchase decision by the time they link off to your website," he says.

Six to seven months ago, the team began testing the LLMs themselves — asking the questions that a guest with a specific persona would ask — and found content gaps on the site. The response was a full content replan: more text-rich, itinerary-based, experience-led copy written for how LLMs absorb and relay information, not just how search engines index it. User-generated content plays a supporting role, adding credibility to the brand's own positioning. "It's not really a business need," Zvatora says. "It's a guest need. What are they asking? How do we make sure they get that as quickly as possible?"

Navigating the Middle East crisis

The conversation was recorded on 20 April 2026, at a moment when the conflict in the Middle East was actively disrupting travel patterns into the Indian Ocean.

"It's probably the one thing that keeps me up at night at the moment," Zvatora says. "It's something that is interrupting every aspect of the supply chain." Guests transiting through Dubai and Qatar faced immediate uncertainty, which translated overnight into a significant drag on new bookings from European markets. At the same time, diesel costs for island properties running on full generator power rose sharply.

The response has been rapid and deliberate. OUTRIGGER's diversified source market base — already a strategic priority — proved its value immediately. Russia, a market the brand had been managing carefully, became an opportunity: campaigns were accelerated, and the brand's sales networks were activated at a postcode level to target high-propensity travellers. "The handbrake is down, the pedal's to the metal," Zvatora says.

Partnership has been the other pillar of the response — direct lines to airline and trade partner contacts to navigate collectively. And on the operational side, teams moved quickly to secure diesel supply for island properties to ensure the conflict remains invisible to any guest once they step on property. "At no point in time, once you step onto one of our properties, should this conflict be a consideration," Zvatora says.

Sustainability: conservation as brand identity

OUTRIGGER's sustainability programme, which it calls the OUTRIGGER Zone (or Ozone), predates Green Seal and Green Key certification. Coral restoration, reef protection, and beach cleanups have been embedded in operations for years, with guests actively invited to participate alongside marine biologists. "There's too much in our industry of greenwashing," Zvatora says, "and we need to preserve what is special about our locations."

The brand recently completed Green Key certification across its Fiji, Mauritius, and Thailand properties, with the remaining portfolio to follow. On the development side, every refurbishment project now incorporates sustainable design principles, reduced plastics, and local sourcing as baseline requirements.

For Zvatora, this is not optional. OUTRIGGER's entire commercial proposition rests on the natural environments it operates in. "We own that beachfront space. There's no other brand in the world that solely focuses on that beachfront delivery. So the conservation piece is embedded in everything we do."

What is next for OUTRIGGER?

The brand's near-term pipeline is anchored by the Outrigger PP Beach Resort on Phi Phi Island, a 63-key all-villa, all-suite property that has since opened its doors following an extensive repositioning. It represents the brand's continued push deeper into Thailand and its model of acquiring and repositioning assets to OUTRIGGER standards.

Looking further ahead, Zvatora is clear about the growth ambitions for the APAC and Indian Ocean portfolio. Australia — the brand's third-largest source market — is a priority, with a desire to return to the iconic beachfront position the brand once held there. Indonesia and Bali are on the radar. Japan, particularly Okinawa, is described as an exciting opportunity given the historic strength of the OUTRIGGER brand among Japanese travellers and the synergy with its Hawaiian roots.

Management contracts are also a growing part of the growth model, alongside the brand's owner-operator heritage. Branded residences are on the table as a structural opportunity, particularly given the financial realities of development economics.

"In a nutshell," Zvatora says of 2030, "we are going to be the most iconic beachfront resort brand, full stop, end of story. We're going to own that space."

The closing thought

When asked what he would leave the audience with, Zvatora came back to the same place the interview started: purpose.

"It's purpose-led hospitality. The blend of culture and conservation." He tells a personal story: when he returned to OUTRIGGER after a five-year absence, his then-ten-year-old son asked immediately whether it meant they would get to go back to the properties. What struck Zvatora was that his son did not remember the rooms. He remembered how he was made to feel, and the experiences he had around the beach and the ocean. "We are generating our next generation of travellers," Zvatora says.

"At the end of the day, it distils down to maintaining our authentic nature, but keeping the scale there as well."