The House Hotel Jeddah City Yard ( here and below )
If recognition and opportunity weren ’ t enough motivation , Kerten ’ s revenue center in Poland , not far from what has been a battlefield in Ukraine , has served to further bring the team together . “ We really came together as a team to support the center and its people , and that really motivated the team to progress together and grow from there ,” Knippenberg says . “ At the moment , the other most important pieces include finalizing more of our processes and bringing on the next projects .” Those processes for the young company are being led by recently appointed COO Wafik Youssef .
With the most recent opening scheduled for May , The House Hotel in Tbilisi , Knippenberg says the focus is on “ opening , opening , opening , and signing , signing , signing .”
Being able to prove performance [ 40 % GOP in Aqaba ] has been a real gamechanger , taking the idea beyond concept to reality , she says . “ The bottom line looks very good ,” she adds . “ We can do this on more projects and really bring this whole story to life .”
THE KERTEN PROCESS But growing from two hotels open to a pipeline of close to 50 properties , including some stand-alone F & B developments , can sound rather daunting to an emerging player . Knippenberg ’ s response : no sleep and , again , process .
The team builds a story for every project and focuses intently on the relationship with the owners , gathering intelligence about what will work best for the project and sharing it with the team . “ Every project has a different champion . So , it doesn ’ t matter what your role is in the organization ,” Knippenberg says . “ And the champion is not the person who brings it to life but is really the one who coordinates it . Then , it really follows with ESG , product , and then neighborhood , and goes from there . Now that we are better able to do this and follow it systematically , I have probably felt more zen than ever because I can see how we can grow this out with the way that we ’ ve built it up .”
That said , with issues surrounding supply chain , inflation , rising interest rates , how does the Kerten team maintain that level of “ zen ?”
Knippenberg says because Kerten lives an ESG-first approach to development , tied to the community , it doesn ’ t have as many international or exclusive FF & E agreements , which could potentially face delays and multiple price hikes . And even though interest rates are going up , she says there is a lot of capital available that has been sitting on the side during COVID . In fact , some competing projects that no longer pencil-out due to COVID-related challenges are creating new opportunities for Kerten . “ People are sitting on money and want to spend it ,” she adds . “ They see the opportunities and want to do transactions … There ’ s always a down , there ’ s always an up – it just depends on from which pond you ’ re fishing .”
What also seems to set Kerten apart is its philosophy about distribution . Yes , it has its own booking engine and Knippenberg says they are successfully converting new customers to direct bookers because of relationships built on property , but Kerten also embraces OTAs . “ I think booking . com and Expedia are driving so much business , and even people in the industry who complain about it still book their trips via booking . com because it ’ s so much easier ,” she says . “ There ’ s a lot you can do with those channels , instead of trying to reinvent the new generation of loyalty … You don ’ t
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