Kerten Hospitality's goal as a hotel management company is to bring a fresh approach to the sector, a vision which started to form about a decade ago when hotel owners wanted something different from a long list of brand standards.
That sea change came in parallel to the new demands from guests for more experiences, said Marloes Knippenberg, CEO of Kerten Hospitality on the latest episode of “The Upgrade: EMEA Hospitality News” podcast.
Kerten was born from those two poles, she said, and now many of the big hotel operating companies are starting or pushing soft brands. But Kerten was among the very first to talk of hotels in terms of mixed-use real estate.
To gain first-mover advantage in that specific field, the company's first priority was to invest in people, Knippenberg said.
“Person by person, we have every function in-house, and we very much focus for the last couple of years on building infrastructure, the financing of IT, revenue management [and] distribution, everything that is boring but that you need to scale,” she said.
Kerten’s hotel brands include Cloud 7 and The House, as well as its new brand, Hosme, a lifestyle brand that Kerten will launch for at guests seeking “affordable contemporary.”
There is a definite gap in the market for the concept, and she said the brand's first two projects will be announced this summer.
“We developed this brand because … in the budget sector you either have the bog standard and boring or you have the very kind of hipster, colorful, party-in-the-lobby product, and there is very little in between. So, we have launched Hosme to play into that segment where it is affordable, and the word ‘contemporary’ is very important here,” Knippenberg said.
Kerten's hotel portfolio includes properties in Egypt, France, Georgia, India, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has been a big push for the company, with a total of nine hotels either open or in its development pipeline.
Co-working has always been an important component of its hotel properties, and Kerten has interests in branded residences and serviced apartments.
For more from Marloes Knippenberg on co-working, experiential travel, the rise of Saudi Arabia and on the current travails affecting her home of Dubai and the Middle East, listen to the podcast embedded above.