In August 2022, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and the London-based real-estate firm Cain International committed $900 million to Aman Group, on a valuation of $3 billion (Skift, 25 August 2022). The cheque arrived three weeks after the opening of Aman New York at the Crown Building on 11 August 2022 — the most consequential urban hotel opening of the decade and the project that fixed Vladislav Doronin's reputation as the operator who could put an Aman on Fifth Avenue without breaking the brand.
The Aman model under Doronin is now legible enough to be described as a doctrine. There are four parts. First, vertical integration: the group owns the brand, operates the hotels, develops the residences and runs the private aviation programme through Aman Jet Expeditions. Second, residential capture: every new urban opening since New York has been paired with a branded-residences component, and the New York project produced a $74 million penthouse sale that, at the time, was Manhattan's largest closing of the year (6sqft, 2022). Third, restraint on the opening pace: the group's own pipeline disclosures show one or two openings per year, not five or six, even with a $900 million capital raise sitting on the balance sheet. Fourth, an Aman Essentials extension — skincare, perfumery, leather goods — designed to deepen the per-guest economic relationship without diluting the room count.
The 2026-27 pipeline is the test of the doctrine. Amanvari opens in spring 2026 on the East Cape of Baja California, inside the 1,500-acre Costa Palmas private estate — eighteen keys plus residences (LATTE Luxury News, 3 September 2025). Aman AlUla in Saudi Arabia follows the same year. Aman Beverly Hills and Aman Miami Beach are slated for 2027, alongside Aman Niseko in Japan and Amansamar in Saudi Arabia's Wadi Safar. Aman at Sea — the group's first hospitality vessel — is scheduled for 2027 as well. The pace is deliberate: by the group's own count, fewer than ten openings across three years, against a brand pool that could plausibly support thirty.
The strategic argument for the restraint is the one Doronin has made consistently in interviews with Bloomberg and Business Traveller. The brand premium evaporates the moment the next Aman opens on a calendar the existing guest can predict. The $3 billion valuation rests on the belief that the next ten years' openings will land at the same per-key trophy economics as the New York project — a $74 million penthouse sale, a $200,000 club initiation, a $3,200-a-night base suite (CPP-Luxury, pre-opening pricing). That premium does not survive a fast pipeline.
The reading for the family-office buyer is straightforward. Aman, on the current trajectory, is positioning itself as the hospitality equivalent of a Patek Philippe reference 5711 — a good whose scarcity is the asset, and whose ownership programme is the durable monetisation. The branded residences sold at New York, the residences component of Amanvari and the residences planned for Beverly Hills, Miami and Tokyo are the part of the model that translates the brand into a multi-decade balance-sheet asset for the buyer and a recurring service-fee annuity for Aman. The hotel is the front door; the residence is the financial structure behind it.
The risk is also legible. A sovereign-fund partner expects an exit window. The 2022 capital raise from PIF and Cain priced the group at $3 billion; a subsequent transaction or partial listing would need to clear materially higher to satisfy that base. Doronin has hinted at a possible IPO without committing to a venue or a date. The Soho House episode — IPO 2021, take-private 2025 — is the cautionary text. The Aman bet, fifteen years in under Doronin, is that the membership-grade experience can be scaled to thirty cities without becoming the next thing markets revalue downward.
— Camille Vedy
