The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: Why Destinations Need a Portfolio Mindset
Success isn't about competing harder. It's about building an advantage so distinct that your business becomes impossible to ignore. The stronger your point of difference, the more control you have over your own destiny.
If that sounds like too much trouble, and you'd rather enter a market where almost anyone can copy what you do, compete for the same customers and offer more of the same, then the restaurant business might be exactly the place for you.
This is how Gustavo de Hostos opened his speech at FHS 2026. But the pressure behind it is no longer just an F&B problem. It shows up in every destination masterplanning brief we work on.
Why F&B Differentiation Is Getting Harder
Over the past ten years, the number of F&B outlets worldwide has grown from roughly 12 million to more than 15 million, around 800 openings a day. More supply hasn't meant more distinction. Most of those outlets chase the same customers with the same brands, cuisines and concepts. Around 60% close within five years, and only a small fraction of the rest become somewhere people remember and go back to.
From Individual Assets to Integrated Destination Ecosystems
Developers are responding. Across hospitality, retail, entertainment and public realm,the thinking is moving away from individual assets and towards ecosystems. The useful question is whether everything together gives people a stronger reason to visit, stay and come back.
The best destinations in the world grew that mix organically over decades. Nobody gives us decades. We're asked to curate it deliberately from day one.
That changes what F&B is for. It used to be an amenity you slotted into the masterplan. Now it's one of the tools that creates demand, brings people through the door, keeps them longer and lifts the value of everything around it. I'd call it commercial infrastructure and a placemaking catalyst. So, the brief shifts from "where do the restaurants go?" to "how do we use F&B to make the whole destination perform?"
Why Fragmented Development Undermines Destination Performance
We want an integrated destination, but we still run the process the old way: split the project into workstreams, give each team its own mandate, then try to stitch everything back together at the end. A fragmented process chasing a unified result rarely delivers one.
We see 2 points where it goes wrong, and where it can be fixed.
First, before any strategy is written, owners, developers, leasing teams, brands, consultants and operators arrive with different priorities and their own idea of success. Each is reasonable. Put them together without a shared destination proposition and they start pulling against each other. A leasing deal that makes commercial sense waters down the positioning. Two strong brands end up competing rather than complementing. Supply stacks up around the same demand instead of creating new reasons to come.
Agree one proposition, one target audience and one definition of success up front, and those same priorities start reinforcing each other. It only works if people genuinely buy in and use the vision to make decisions later, not just nod along in a workshop.
With the vision agreed, it has to become a role for each part of the masterplan. This is where things usually come apart. The site gets cut into clusters and plots, each with its own brief, architect and operator. Decisions follow land use and plot requirements rather than what that plot needs to do for the destination. Every team does good work against its own brief, and you still end up with overlapping audiences, occasions and offers. Cannibalisation, in other words.
So the question must change. Ask what role a plot plays before asking what it can hold. The best use of a single plot isn't always the best result for the masterplan. We need to decide who each area is for, which occasion it owns, when it comes alive and how it fits with its neighbours.
A family cluster, for instance, might exist to drive daytime visits and longer stays. That goes well beyond the tenant mix. It affects shade, stroller-friendly paths, drop-offs, seating and play space. The whole place is built around how a family really spends a day. Another cluster might carry the destination into the evening for a younger crowd, with dining, entertainment and late-night concepts. That changes access, acoustics, lighting and which operators you choose.
Same masterplan, different audiences and dayparts, by design rather than by accident.
The Future of Destination Development: A Portfolio of Places
It's a move from developing plots as standalone opportunities to running a destination as a portfolio of places that complement each other. Each still has to make money, but its role is set by what it adds to the whole.
If you're planning a destination right now, start by deciding what job each plot has to do. Everything else, from leasing to operator selection, gets easier once that's clear.