Charlie MacGregor, CEO and founder of The Student Hotel, says he is driven by engaging and inspiring the communities where he chooses to open his properties.

The Student Hotel, which now has a portfolio valued at approximately 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion), started with a property in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 2006. The brand first catered to the student and backpacker crowd that booked stays with such hostel or budget chains such as Generator and Meininger Hotels.

Currently, the lobbies of The Student Hotel might be more subdued than normal with less demand because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they remain the lifeblood of the brand, MacGregor said.

The strategy of The Student Hotel is always to ensure the property adds value to the community it is in, beyond it just being a pleasant place to grab a coffee.

MacGregor has put similar drive and empathy in his work with humanitarian organization Movement on the Ground, founding and operating several refugee camps for migrants. His experience with aiding refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos inspired him to organize Movement on the Ground in 2016, a year after APG — the asset-management division of Dutch pension fund ABP — became The Student Hotel’s principal investor for 100 million euros ($120 million). Its other principal investor is London-based asset-management firm Aermont Capital.

The organization has camps in Lesbos and on the Greek island of Samos, and there is a mission in Athens. Initiatives at the camps include sporting events and a digital laboratory to help refugees learn computing and coding. Partnerships include working with Dutch NGO Refugee Talent Hub that connects them with employers, and MacGregor said the success of such an endeavor must prioritize adding value to communities.

He said he's learned much about the hotel business by caring for refugees.

“Refugee camps are set up with excellent intentions but then are not operated well in most cases. There is no real difference between running them and running a hotel,” he said.

MacGregor said the effects of the pandemic have merely heightened his sense of mission, and it hasalso forced him to tweak his room inventory to suit any demand that remains.

Unlike hostel brands, properties that are part of The Student Hotel do not have dormitories, which allows changes to be made easily to single and double room offerings. MacGregor said this hybrid approach has always been the name of the game, adding that his hotels are very well-placed to add and increase the number of co-working and extended-stay spaces available.

When considering a new destination for a hotel, MacGregor said he does not need the property to compete with mainstream hotels, nor must it be disruptive of traditional accommodations options.

“We noticed during COVID that we were getting requests from business employees, and where we could, we have accommodated them with what they need to continue being successful,” he said.

That is not to say the last year has not been tough, but it could have been a lot worse, he added.

The Student Hotel's main guest demographic — students — would stay between five and 12 months. When rooms open up, the company pivoted to hotel guests, who stayed on average only a few days, and then also to business guests, who stayed for an average of two weeks.

MacGregor said guests enjoy the hotels’ well-connected city-center locations, and his goal now is to increase the number of freelancers and professionals wanting to work in a different environment as lockdowns end across Europe.

The Student Hotel now has 15 properties open, with its core numbers in its home base of The Netherlands. The original Rotterdam property has been joined by two in Amsterdam and one each in Delft, The Hague, Maastricht, Eindhoven and Groningen. The company also has properties open in Florence, Bologna, Paris, Vienna and Berlin, along with two student-only campuses in Barcelona.

In its pipeline are two additional assets in Florence, another in Paris and one each in Porto, Lisbon, Madrid, Toulouse, Turin and Rome.

“In the United Kingdom, Glasgow is on our radar,” MacGregor said, who added his goal is to have 65 properties, all in Europe, in the next five years.

All properties have remained open during the pandemic, even if demand for them fell or changed, he added.

He said the firm’s resilience and adaptability during COVID-19 is a legacy of its business model, one that bodes well for a post-pandemic world.

Sustainability and accountability are equally important to The Student Hotel, MacGregor said. An initiative penciled in before the pandemic was to make all of the company's hotels’ F&B waste-free, and the onus is to make sure that happens when operations return to normal.

Another is to make sure all aspects of operation concur with the recommendations of the Paris Climate Agreement by 2030.

MacGregor said his sustainability goals for his hotels also are true in the refugee camps, and he is working with the Movement on the Ground’s operators to have the strategies and blue prints of those camps be adopted as universal standards.