Before anyone buys paradise, someone has to ask about the boat. In Nihat Ercan’s early Maldives work, the questions went well beyond the attractiveness of a resort. Buyers needed to understand how to reach it, what kept it running and what, precisely, they would control. A beach photograph has the considerable advantage of never having to explain a lease.
Looking back on the sale of Soneva Gili, Ercan described a learning process involving power capacity, land measurements and the difference between arriving by speedboat and arriving by air. The practical question was wonderfully plain: “How do you get there?” It is a useful place to begin a career that would eventually encompass billions of dollars in hotel transactions.
Today, Ercan is based in Singapore as CEO of JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality Group in Asia Pacific. The title has a large geographical reach. But the island questions offer a more intimate introduction to the work. Long before a property becomes a completed deal, an unfamiliar place has to become understandable to somebody prepared to own it.
A hospitality education, followed by a different sort of check-in
Ercan studied hotel management at the University of Surrey, earning a first-class honours degree. He joined JLL in London in 2002 and moved to Singapore in 2007. His career has stayed within the firm’s hotels business while its geographical setting has widened considerably.
There is something apt about that educational starting point. A hotel is a property with a daily performance attached. The building can remain in the same place while the experience, room rates and reasons to visit change around it. Understanding what a hotel does is a useful companion to understanding what somebody might pay for it.
His transaction record extends across Europe, Asia and the Indian Ocean. The names include Cheval Blanc in the Maldives, Grand Park Orchard in Singapore and InterContinental Hong Kong. In 2019, his work included Conrad Maldives, Anantara Maldives, Andaz Singapore and Westin Tokyo. Read together, they suggest a career that cannot be contained in one kind of lobby.
- 2002Joins JLL in London
- 2007Moves to Singapore
- 2023Becomes Asia Pacific hotels CEO
The island becomes a business proposition
By June 2016, Ercan was giving the keynote at a Bank of Maldives event called “Maldives: A Great Place to Invest”. Held at Hotel Jen, it brought corporate clients together for a discussion of tourism and international real estate. At that point, his experience included more than US$4.5 billion in hotel transactions and six major Maldives property deals.
The occasion is a small but revealing episode. Selling an individual asset and explaining a destination to a roomful of businesspeople are related tasks. Both require a connection between the appeal of a place and the mechanics of putting capital there. A resort may be instantly desirable as a holiday. As an investment, it invites a longer conversation.
That distinction gives Ercan’s public career its particular shape. He appears in the space between people who know a property closely and people considering it from elsewhere. The first group needs its circumstances understood. The second needs enough clarity to make a decision. Attractive scenery is welcome in that conversation; it cannot conduct the meeting.
From one transaction to the next owner
The Maldives story continued into his first year as regional CEO. In July 2023, JLL announced the sale of Amari Havodda to Minor International and its financial partner, Abu Dhabi Fund for Development. JLL advised the seller, Crystal Plaza Resorts. The buyer group connected a Thailand-based hospitality company with capital from Abu Dhabi.
The resort had 120 villas and lay in Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, with access involving a domestic flight from the international airport. Minor planned to bring it into the NH Collection brand. The transaction therefore carried several stories at once: an ownership change, an international partnership and a new brand chapter for an existing resort.
Ercan’s comments at the time emphasised investor interest despite rising rates and broader economic pressures. The detail matters because a completed hotel sale involves a judgment about what happens after completion. A new owner inherits the task of making the property work. Signing the papers does not relieve anyone of needing guests.
“How do you get there?”
Nihat Ercan, discussing early Maldives resort investment
The desk gets bigger
JLL announced Ercan’s appointment as Asia Pacific hotels CEO in February 2023. He succeeded Mike Batchelor, who became chairman of the regional hotels business. Ercan had most recently been senior managing director and head of investment sales for Asia Pacific. By the appointment, he had personally led US$10 billion in hotel transactions.
The remit expanded beyond sales to encompass advisory, asset management and client management across 14 markets. Ercan remained in Singapore and joined the global hotels leadership team. The progression took 21 years from his arrival at JLL, a substantial stretch of time to spend learning one business from different desks.
At the appointment, he pointed to better connectivity and a broader mix of business and leisure travellers as reasons for the region’s development. Those ambitions connect the executive role to the earlier practical questions. How people travel, where they choose to stay and which destinations become easier to reach all help shape the opportunities an owner can consider.
Good deals have more than one name attached
The awards record also offers a useful correction to the temptation to make a transaction career sound solitary. At HICAP in 2022, JLL received recognition for the Hilton Sydney sale and for the acquisition of W Maldives and Sheraton Maldives Full Moon Resort & Spa. Calvin Li received the event’s Rising Star award.
The Hilton Sydney deal, at about A$530 million, involved a 587-room property acquired by Barings Private Equity. The Maldives transaction brought together KSL Capital Partners, Universal Enterprises and Marriott International. Ercan’s response shared the recognition with the partners involved. The crowded cast is part of the substance of this kind of work.
International coordination has an organisational form, too. In 2023, JLL appointed Patrick Saade to lead its Global Hotels Desk, connecting international investors with assets and portfolios. Ercan sat alongside the group’s other regional leaders. For a buyer looking beyond a home market, the relevant expertise may sit in several places before it ever gathers around one table.
The moderator’s chair
At HICAP in 2025, Ercan moderated an investment panel whose participants included Kenny Gaw, Gary Kwok, Jason Leong, Hoe Kit Mak and Eric Siegel. Their discussion moved through China, Japan, financing and the possibilities of improving existing assets. It was a conversation about differences within a region often presented as a single market.
Gaw discussed changing opportunities in China. Other participants considered renovations, property configuration and the importance of access for resorts. These were the investors’ judgments, rather than a set of claims belonging to the moderator. Ercan’s place in the photograph is an apt one: alongside people whose decisions his profession exists to inform.
His involvement continued in HICAP’s 2026 awards programme, including the Merger & Acquisition of the Year committee. Such appearances put the advisory role in public view. A person who works on transactions also helps convene the conversation about which transactions deserve attention, and what the industry should learn from them.
When the forecast has to catch up
His comments on India show how quickly the market conversation can move. In April 2025, he discussed the possibility of annual hotel investment reaching US$1 billion by 2028. By 2026, the timetable looked different: first-half deals reached US$493 million, and JLL revised its full-year transaction forecast to about US$1.1 billion.
That is a forecast changing as evidence arrives. It also shifts attention beyond the regional markets that have traditionally accounted for most transaction activity. A regional advisor has to watch both the places already attracting capital and the places beginning to claim more of it. Familiarity with yesterday’s map is useful; it does not finish tomorrow’s work.
The wider regional figures moved as well. In October 2026, JLL reported US$12 billion in Asia Pacific hotel investment during the first nine months, up 50% on a year earlier. Japan accounted for US$4.7 billion. JLL raised its full-year expectation to US$15 billion. These are market totals, distinct from Ercan’s personal career transaction record.
Recorded activity and a full-year forecast, as reported in October 2026. A forecast is not a completed transaction.
Earlier in 2026, Ercan had connected the regional outlook to travel growth, expanding middle classes and cross-border opportunities. By October, his commentary also addressed more selective capital, regional cities and properties with potential for a different use. The hotel remains the subject, but the buyer’s plan for it can change.
That is where the career comes back into focus. There is the hotel a traveller sees, the business an owner operates and the opportunity a buyer is trying to assess. Ercan’s work runs between those views. After all the titles, panels and transaction totals, the boat still matters. Somebody has to know how everyone gets there.