Gansevoort Hotel Adds Members Club: Founder’s Lessons To NOT ‘Hemorrhage Money’
Photo Caption: Exterior of The Curtain in London's Shoreditch neighborhood. Photo by Niall Clutton. Source: Ennismore.
Skift Take
It's rare for boutique hoteliers to share lessons learned the hard way, at least in public. Kudos to Michael Achenbaum, creator of The Gansevoort in New York, for revealing some missteps to avoid when adding a members club to a hotel.
A handful of real estate investors are exploring how to combine hotels with members clubs — which typically charge an annual fee for access to co-working spaces, food and beverage offerings, and a fitness or wellness center. Yet blending a hotel with a club can be tricky, said Michael Achenbaum, the president and founder of the Gansevoort Hotel Group.
"I know a lot of people are moving into this genre [of membership clubs, but, to really figure out how to work it, it's not the simplest thing," Achenbaum said during an on-stage interview at the Boutique Hotel Investment Conference on June 8.
Achenbaum began in hospitality with The Gansevoort, a boutique property that opened in 2004 in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District — and in the past year received a $30 million renovation.
In 2017, Achenbaum wanted to take the membership club model and apply it in a modern way to a hotel. In London's Shoreditch neighborhood, he co-developed The Curtain. His firm then essentially sold the property (or freehold) to Ruben Brothers, leasing it back to run as a management company. During the pandemic, his firm had to walk from the property. The Curtain is now Ennismore's Mondrian Hotel in Shoreditch.
This fall Achenbaum is taking the lessons he learned in London to add a membership club to The Gansevoort in New York. His lessons include what type of people to target, how to avoid conflicts, tech mistakes to avoid, why keeping control of the business is
