A hotel room in the Thompson in Washington DC, which opened on January 8, 2020. — Photo by BusinessInsider.com

Right now, there are over 200,000 Hyatt hotel rooms. Those rooms span 20 brands and 875 properties and are supported by 100,000 employees worldwide — and there are about to be a whole lot more of them. In late January, Hyatt Hotels Corporation announced the expected opening of 50 new hotels and resorts in the Americas by the end of 2020 — and an addition 140 2022. In December, Hyatt announced more than 20 new luxury hotels are expected to open worldwide by the end of 2020.

The Park Hyatt, the chain's first luxury brand, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. But the very first Hyatt was purchased over a decade prior to the founding of Park Hyatt, in 1957, when a well-to-do Chicago lawyer took a business trip to Los Angeles that resulted in him buying the hotel closest to the airport, mostly on a whim. Today, his family is one of the richest in the world, with 11 total billionaires — nine of whom are on the 2019 Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in America.

Read the full article at BusinessInsider.com