Grand Hyatt will grow its presence in Latin America and the Caribbean over the next two years as several new properties come online.

Grand Hyatt, a resort and business-focused hotel brand within the huge Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp., will grow its presence in Latin America and the Caribbean over the next two years as several new properties come online.

The Grand Hyatt Playa del Carmen Resort is slated to open later this month.

Noted Sandra Cordova Micek, senior vice present of Hyatt global brands: "Hyatt is committed to being the most preferred hospitality brand by opening in key locations where our guests are traveling."

And as Hyatt sees it right now, Latin America is heating up.

The first of the planned new Grand Hyatts will open in Playa del Carmen, Mexico later this month. The Playa del Carmen Resort originally was planned as an upscale hotel. But Hyatt upped the ante and decided to make it a luxury 314-room hotel with Mayan-inspired design elements in the rooms, restaurants and lounges that reflect the property's immediate surroundings.

The Grand Hyatt at Baha Mar in the Bahamas is scheduled to opened later this summer, while a new Grand Hyatt in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will open next winter in advance of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in that city. Another Grand Hyatt in Bogota, Columbia, is slated to open in spring of 2017.

Grand Hyatt also operates two other hotels in Santiago, Chile, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, which opened in 1992 and 2002 respectively.

Celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, the Grand Hyatt brand includes more than 40 hotel properties around the world.