Skift Take
What’s most interesting about this boutique lifestyle hotel brand is its willingness to take risks and to continually experiment, but not if that means following the pack.
You might think that the co-founder of a lifestyle hotel brand like 25hours might embrace emerging hospitality concepts such as homesharing, co-living, and co-working.
But for Christoph Hoffman, CEO of Hamburg-based 25hours Hotels — even though those ideas might be dominating chatter among investors and developers — there’s a danger in everyone chasing the same trends.
“Everybody’s jumping on the same train, and it becomes, to me, funny and maybe also dangerous in some areas, because too many people are doing the same thing,” Hoffman said. “Then it repeats itself and everyone has the same kind of product.”
While he thinks of co-working as “interesting form a hospitality point of view” he also believes hoteliers should simply “create a hotel product which is more dedicated to the local crowd, or to the community who is using a city like New York or Dubai on a frequent basis.”
A guest, Hoffman explains, “is renting the entire space,” so why not offer him/her “an experience which is the whole hotel?” “That, to me,” he said, “is the third space experience — it’s co-working and co-living.”
As for homesharing, Hoffman said “I think it is dangerous for hotels who don’t offer a real, proper, nice hotel experience where you get really nice F&B [food and beverage], where you have a nice bar, where you have great service by people who are attentive, and where you can also build up a relationship, because if you go to a homesharing place, eventually you will become lonely.”
But while Hoffman thinks hoteliers should focus more on creating great spaces that accommodate co-working and that differentiate the hotel experience from homesharing, that’s also not stopping him and his company from experimenting with a variety of new concepts, from old-school concierge services to robots.
Skift sat down with Hoffman during a recent visit to New York City to ask him about his thoughts on experimentation in hospitality, as well as an update on Accor’s investment in the brand. Here’s what he had to say.
[caption id="attachment_304493" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Last fall, 25hours piloted a concierge service to be utilized by locals and hotel guests alike. Source: 25hours Hotels[/caption]
Always
