to IMEX week in Frankfurt. You know the hotels, you know the taxi queues, you know the walk from the Messe to your dinner reservation. For most of us who attend year after year, Frankfurt functions as a backdrop – a reliable, efficient host city that largely stays out of the way while the industry gets on with its business.

This year, I stepped off that well-worn path. The Frankfurt Convention Bureau invited a group of media to join a post- IMEX venue tour across the city and the wider FrankfurtRhineMain region. The brief was deliberate: boutique properties, alternative formats, venues that reward a more considered approach to event design. What I found was a destination operating on two very different frequencies at once, and the quieter one is worth listening to.

Frankfurt sits at the centre of a remarkably compact region. The Rheingau wine valley, home to some of Germany’ s most dramatic landscapes, is less than 45 minutes from Frankfurt Airport. Sachsenhausen, the city’ s most characterful district, is a 10-minute drive from the terminals. What this means for planners is that you can land delegates from an international flight and have them standing in a medieval monastery courtyard, or on a hilltop forest terrace, within the hour. That logistical reality changes what is possible.

Two hotels, one street, two very different briefs Sachsenhausen is worth particular attention. Historically the city’ s bohemian quarter, known for its apple wine taverns, independent galleries and leafy riverside streets, now hosts two new luxury properties that serve quite

Top right: FOUR Frankfurt

Bottom right:

Greenery abounds and many minor destination gems can be found outside the city centre

Left: WALD. WEIT Rheingau Hotel & Retreat

different planning needs, yet sit barely a stone’ s throw apart.

Kennedy 89 opened in 2025 and carries the cultural energy of its neighbourhood into its DNA. With a high proportion of suites among its 181 rooms, it functions well for incentive groups where bedroom quality is part of the proposition, not just a practical requirement. The location gives delegates access to the Städel Museum, the Main riverfront and the kind of genuine neighbourhood life that is increasingly hard to engineer into event programmes but easy to experience organically here. For a leadership incentive or a high-end meeting programme, where you want Frankfurt to feel like a city worth arriving in rather than a city to pass through, this address makes sense.

A few minutes’ walk away, The Florentin opened in December 2025 in what was previously the Villa Kennedy – a listed mansion built in 1901 that spent years as a Rocco Forte property before