They will pamper us

Paris. With its investment in 25hours Hotels this week, AccorHotels has added another piece to its lifestyle jigsaw. On the fringes of the announcement of this deal, AccorHotels CEO Sébastien Bazin told hospitalityInside.com what the next steps in the company's restructuring would be.

Paris. AccorHotels continues to purchase lifestyle knowhow: the French hotel and investment group purchased 30 percent of the German 25hours Hotels. The respective agreement was signed by AccorHotels' CEO Sébastien Bazin und 25hours' CEO Christoph Hoffmann this afternoon at the hotel chain's headquarters in Paris. For this first step in the new "strategic partnership", as they call it, the creative minds from Hamburg receive 34.7 million euros.

The negotiations started more than one year ago after Christoph Hoffmann personally showed Accor's leader the 25hours Bikini Berlin. Taken by the unusual and individual concept, the negotiations started... "We will definitely not standardise the creativity of 25hours," emphasised Gaurav Bhushan, Global Chief Development at AccorHotels, right at the beginning of the press conference in Paris. The group was looking for another brand instead classed above the Mama Shelter group, which was just purchased in October 2014, and which is able to form a bridge between lifestyle to luxury concerning the price-performance ratio.

Currently, 25hours operates seven hotels and has five additional hotels in the pipeline. The expected turnover is at 67 million euros in 2016. "We are very profitable," said Hoffmann, referring to the group-wide average occupancy of 83 percent and a net net ADR of 130 to 135 euros.

"We will carry the 25hours brand around the world," assured Gaurav Bhushan, "and we will purchase additional shares of this company in the next five years." It was the easier access to expansion opportunities outside the German-speaking countries, which allowed the associates Christoph Hoffmann, Kai Hollmann, and Stephan Gerhard to undertake this step.

The entire business remains in the hands of Hoffmann and his team. "They will keep everything under control," said Bhushan. However, there are no concrete figures available about how many 25hours will exist in future; they playfully talked about 50 or 75 hotels at the press conference... At any rate, 25hours Hotels plans to grow by management or "manchise" agreements – at the side of AccorHotels.

"For us, the question arose, how much further we could go with our current resources," explained Christoph Hoffmann to hospitalityInside.com. "We believe that AccorHotels will even strengthen our own culture. ... There is no rivalry between their and our brands; our small brand fits well into the large chain... And as long as AccorHotels does not change its concept, we will be an asset for the corporation."

Laurent Picheral, CEO Central & Eastern Europe and Head of Germany at AccorHotels: "25hours is a think tank of the 21st century... and the 25hours concept is an ideal addition to our brands and for our positioning concerning new customer groups in the lifestyle segment."

Today, the German cartel office received the participation for approval. This is only a formal matter and should be approved within four weeks' time.

More details will follow in our issue on Friday. / Maria Puetz-Willems

Wiesbaden. The flood of brands is neverending. Year after year, hotel chains invent new ones, but tour operators have been following suit recently. And: the number of young, more innovative individual hoteliers creating their own brand is growing as well. They simply want to stand out from the crowd – in order to be able to maybe sell both brand and concept later on should they be lucky, as prizeotel and 25hours have been. Getting that far requires a lot of dedication, endless engagement and quite some money. Does building up an own brand really pay off? Why do hoteliers cling to their brand? Susanne Stauss asked Ruby and Rilano Hotels, Vienna House, Gambino Hotels, which are currently being developed and the young resort brand Arobrea – all German and Austrian companies. Germans are known for clinging.