Germany's A&O Hotels & Hostels has acquired the operations and sole hotel of Berlin-based Schulz Hotels.
Stamford, Connecticut-based Proprium Capital Partners and London-based StepStone Group bought A&O’s holding company, A&O Holding GmbH & Co. KG., in late 2023. This deal for Schulz Hotels is part of a sweeping €500 million ($582 million) investment the parent companies have made in A&O's portfolio and operations platform over the last 18 months.
The sole operating Schulz hotel is the 1,000-bed Schulz Hotel Berlin Wall, which operates under a hostel model, charging per bed rather than per room. The hotel opened in 2018, and there is a sibling property in the planning process in a new development in the center of Berlin called the Heidestrasse, close to the city’s main rail station, Hauptbahnhof.
A&O is also primarily a hostel brand; at the end of 2024 it had approximately 30,000 beds and reported full-year revenue of €232 million ($270 million). The brand includes 44 hotels in 31 European cities in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, its home base of Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom.
In the first six months of 2025, A&O reported it welcomed 1.4 million guests and had occupancy of 73%.
The Schulz Hotel will not be rebranded, and its three founders — Sascha Gechter, Oskar Kan and Nizar Rokbani— will remain in management and advisory roles with A&O, with a remit to expand the Schulz Hotels brand. The trio founded Meininger Hotels in 1999, which today has approximately 22,000 beds in 37 hotels in 11 European countries and 27 cities.
On the November episode of CoStar News Hotels' podcast "The Upgrade," A&O’s CEO Oliver Winter said the firm had opportunity to grow its presence in Europe to a further 15,000 beds over the next three to five years. This one deal sees almost seven percent of that achieved.
Winter said A&O has acquired hotels and hostels and 8,500 beds over the last two years.
In October, the company acquired the 378-room DoubleTree by Hilton London Docklands Riverside, now branded as the A&O London Docklands Riverside. Following a $21 million capital-expenditure plan, the hotel now has approximately 2,100 beds in 500 rooms.
Philipp Westermann, partner at Proprium Capital Partners, said A&O’s acquisition of Schulz Hotels “marks the latest milestone in our drive for strategic growth across key European markets. Joining forces with the Schulz founders, who we have known for over a decade, will allow us to redefine what affordable travel can be.”
For approximately 17 years, Proprium owned a 35% stake in fellow German budget hotel firm Motel One. It sold its stake in April 2024 for €1.25 billion to Motel One’s majority stakeholder One Hotels & Resorts GmbH. It initially bought its stake for €65 million.