Diana Lara on Building the Hospitality Properties of Tomorrow

Diana Lara leads one of the most active hospitality development practices in Europe and the Middle East. Her portfolio spans luxury resorts, urban boutiques, and mixed-use developments, and her perspective on what gets built, where, and why is shaped by decades of navigating the gap between design vision and development reality. Her work touches every phase of hospitality construction, from initial feasibility through to the systems integrations that make a modern property technology stack function on opening day.

We open by exploring how Diana thinks about site selection in 2026. The fundamentals, access, demand drivers, competitive set, have not changed, but the signals she weighs most heavily have. Climate resilience has moved from afterthought to primary filter: a beachfront site that will face a materially different shoreline in twenty years is a fundamentally different investment from one that was accurate before sea-level modelling was standard practice. She argues that any development team not running climate scenario analysis as part of site due diligence is making decisions with an incomplete picture.

Diana is forthright about the construction challenges currently facing developers. Supply chain disruptions that began during the pandemic have not fully resolved, and the skilled trades shortage — particularly in finishes specialists for luxury properties — is extending timelines and compressing margins across the sector. Her approach: build contingency into both budget and programme from day one, and treat the contractor relationship as a strategic partnership rather than a procurement exercise.

Diana walks through the construction realities that derail otherwise well-conceived projects. Supply chain fragility, skilled labour shortages, and the complexity of coordinating mechanical, electrical, and plumbing contractors alongside a property management system integration mean that most projects encounter significant programme slippage. Her advice is consistent: build contingency into both budget and programme from day one, and treat the contractor relationship as a genuine strategic partnership rather than a procurement exercise. The developers who maintain those relationships across multiple projects move faster and encounter fewer surprises.

The conversation turns to the guest experience ambitions that increasingly drive design briefs. Diana has observed a significant shift in what operators are asking for: spaces that are inherently photogenic, flow states that are legible without instruction, and back-of-house configurations that allow service to feel effortless even when it is operationally complex. These are not aesthetic preferences. They are revenue-driving design decisions that directly affect a property's ability to command premium rates and generate the kind of social content that fills a hotel's pipeline before the advertising budget is spent.

We close by discussing the projects Diana is most excited about, and the one design principle she refuses to compromise on, regardless of budget pressure. Her answer connects to the broader theme of the conversation: that the best hospitality development today is defined not by budget but by the clarity of thinking that connects design intent to operational excellence to guest experience outcomes. The properties that achieve this are not necessarily the most expensive ones. They are the most considered ones.