Host is the landlord behind some of America's most famous luxury hotels — it owns the buildings (Ritz-Carlton, Westin, W, St. Regis, Fairmont and 1 Hotels properties), but hires Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton and others to run them. As the largest US lodging REIT and the only one in the S&P 500, it collects the profits from roughly 75 high-end hotels and pays most of that out to shareholders as dividends.
A landlord, not a hotelier
Host owns the buildings but doesn't run them. It hires brand operators like Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton to manage each hotel, then collects the property's profit — so its fortunes ride on travel demand and on the operators it picks.