Hotelier Ian Schrager, Highgate Form JV To Revive The Public Hotels Brand

Hotelier Ian Schrager has found a partner to finally grow his Public Hotels brand, 15 years after he expected.

Schrager is working with hospitality owner and operator Highgate to accelerate the expansion of Public via hotel and boutique company acquisitions, as well as development, according to The Wall Street Journal. Highgate won’t have a stake in Public, but the partnership will go in on buying hotels and inking management contracts. 

Properties in Highgate’s 79,000-room, 400-hotel portfolio will be rebranded into Public hotels. The company’s holdings span luxury, resort and affordable hotels. 

To save money and cut down on labor, Public will switch its dining playbook, starting with its only location, a 367-key building in Manhattan, which has five bars across the hotel, lobby and rooftop. It hosts a Peruvian-inspired restaurant and a space for grab-and-go snacks and baked goods. Instead, the spaces will be run by third-party operators that specialize in fast-casual and takeout fare. Danny Meyer, founder and executive chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group, is talking to Public about leading the new lineup. 

Public’s second hotel is planned to open in West Hollywood in the spring and will feature the updated dining options.

Schrager launched Public Hotels in 2011 with a debut in Chicago. Originally, the plan was to open 15 more nationally within seven years. But he sold that building five years later for $60M, breaking even with what he and Morgan Stanley put into the property. The next year, the Manhattan hotel opened and has remained the only hotel in the Public portfolio. 

Plans to expand were put on hold until now because Schrager was the only one running the company, and he was also working with Marriott from 2008 to 2022, he told The Wall Street Journal. He opened 15 Marriott Edition hotels. 

Hospitality is in a precarious place. 2025 was expected to be the year the industry rebounded from pandemic slowdowns, but no such resurgence happened. Occupancy fell 1.2% year-over-year in 2025, and revenue per available room, while flat for most of last year, fell by 0.3%. Both metrics were the first annual decline since 2020. 

Hoteliers are hoping major events, like the World Cup and the country’s 250th birthday, will boost international and domestic travel, pumping much-needed life back into the sector. But a 6% slowdown in foreign tourism to the U.S. last year, despite an uptick in travel globally, is dimming hopes. Immigration policies from the Trump administration made travelers cancel their U.S. flights and instead pick other countries, like Japan and those in Europe.