Inside Design Hotels: How Stijn Oyen Curates a Global Collection of Hospitality Innovators

Matthias: Stijn, welcome to the show.

Stijn: Thank you, Matthias. Good morning.

Matthias: Good morning. Stijn, maybe first to get our listeners up to speed about Design Hotels. I mean, you obviously have a very renowned brand. Yet the term design hotels, of course, is also a pretty generic descriptor that's used by every hotel that puts a fancy chair in their lobby, right? So as Design Hotels actually goes far beyond pleasing or bold aesthetics, why don't you tell our listeners what makes a member of Design Hotels so special? What do they have that stands out from all the other pretty hotels out there?

Stijn: Absolutely. Thank you, Matthias. I think, first of all, it's all about our community of originals, as we call them. So they're these visionaries that have a big idea and that want to make this happen. So it's not just, as you rightly said, about just operating a good hotel. It's much bigger than that. We literally celebrate, and you know this really well, it's a very much of a curated group of hotels and we really celebrate that they're all different, but they're also based on that vision of the original behind it. You really feel that when you're in property. And I think that's what really makes it different, but it also at the same time takes a stand. It's bold, it's also disruptive, and it doesn't leave you indifferent, I would say. They're often off the beaten track locations. So very often we see that they really attract a more advanced traveler, so to speak. People really that look for purpose and something meaningful. And I think with that, we also really see that evolution. I think to your point, Design Hotels was really there at the origins of the early nineties, it was very out of the box. And I think the great thing is that if you look at us over those three decades, we call it that we've matured, but it's the essence of our brand that what we do is more relevant than ever.

Matthias: As you said, they are very individual, which means you're less that kind of brand where it's all about standards and fitting into pretty clearly defined boxes. It's more a collection, as you also said. And if we talk about collections, there's a couple of things inherent in a collection. A, obviously, at some point, you have to value coherence of the collection over growth metrics, right? And the other thing is the curation is always very much shaped by, let's say, the collector, by individual caretakers whose voices and tastes it kind of represents or expresses. And as you said, in the early years, it was obviously the taste was Claus Sendlinger's taste, right? But now the organization has grown, the portfolio has grown, new owner and everything. So how do you curate your collection? How do you make sure it's building in the right way? You keep the quality high, how much freedom as it's now owned by Marriott, how much freedom do you actually have to tell Marriott, look, we didn't grow by so many times this year because the applicants weren't great? So how do you make sure the collection stays coherent and special and you don't just fill it up with something just for the sake of adding properties? How does the process go? Who's taste is it now, basically?

Stijn: I think it's a collection of all of us as a team. And I think in that sense, first of all, I think we're in a very sweet spot. You've touched the connection with Marriott that we have and obviously the full ownership. And I think we're in a sweet spot in that sense because we've never lost the essence of our brand and that visionary and boundary-breaking philosophy that our collection represents, which comes through the very careful curation of that portfolio. But at the same time, we now also have a very strong way of bringing commercial success to our member hotels, which in an evolving world where competition is always more fierce, gives us really that, I call it the sweet spot. And I think a great balance between being very true to our original values, which are, again, as I said, more relevant than ever. And secondly, being able to really boost great commercial success to our members. I think going back to the curation, it's obviously, we always say we're in a world driven by algorithms, it's so data driven. And I think our curation is really, it's a human act. It reflects taste, perspective, purpose. It's a very tough collection criteria because that is really what makes our brand. So every year we have a huge amount of applications. And of course, to your point, I think there was probably an expectation of when we kind of connected into Marriott or we were acquired by Marriott that we would potentially turn into a growth vehicle, which we are clearly not. It's natural growth. We are really out there looking for those next originals that have a vision, that often they're people that are extremely successful in different parts of business. May they be designers, architects, very often coming from a creative world, or may they have just been very successful in business and they either want to do something back in their local community or they maybe just to kind of give an example of that. So I think one of those great examples is Stratos, who's our original of the Manna, which is a property in Arcadia, about three hours out of Athens. It's actually a 1929 sanatorium, which where he as a child, he spent his summers in that area visiting his grandmother. And actually this building, when he was a child, this was a ruin and they were playing hide and seek in that completely neglected building. And as a young boy, he thought, one day I'd love this to be something. So he had a very clear vision. And later on, he managed to convert it. It took him 10 years, the project was a 10 year project. And I had the pleasure of visiting it last year, just not so long after I started. And we brought a bunch of our owners there, you just feel his presence into that place. And he brought this alive into a, I would say really a fascinating and magnificent way. And it's really bringing back to what was his childhood dream and where he spent a lot of time. I think that's really the essence of what we're all about. It connects to that local community. He really brought something back to the whole area. People that visit connect to locals that being taking out on foraging trips with the different mushroom seasons and then there's truffles and you just see that that whole area kind of glows and I think in that sense we have so many examples of that type of places and they're really very individual visions that are behind it and that's really what you feel as a guest and it goes away from what we see the day of today which is the world of sameness. And maybe on high-end luxury or not in the luxury space a lot of stuff that comes out, if I can put it that way, feels pretty cookie cutter. You could be anywhere in the world and I think our portfolio more than ever, I would say nails that on the head and it's and we see this in the evolution with people. People really want to be part of a community also when they travel. They want that purpose. They want to come back as a better person or as someone who's learned something new, someone who's brought something to a destination.

Matthias: I absolutely agree. I mean, and I think you said two or three times now that that is more relevant than ever. And I fully agree, because when I was at Design Hotels, which was like over 20 years ago, right? So being a member of Design Hotels was that stamp of approval and it was a recommendation system, basically, and a validation and blah, blah, blah. And then a couple of years after I left, I kind of thought the model is kind of over, right? That was the whole thing about social media and the social graph. And at some point I thought, well, why should I care what Klaus Sendlinger or Stijn Oyen tells me about good hotels when I could actually ask my fabulous network, right? And then the social graph trend, as you said, turned into algorithms. And now, and there's this book by Kai Sheik on the filter world. I don't know if you know that, but it was pretty big last year, which says exactly that. So we have the algorithmic approach to it leads to the sameness, as you call it, right? So the flattening of culture, everything's the same. And the minute you deviate from the norm or in Design Hotels terms, the minute you put something original out there, you get no reach, meaning you get no attention, meaning you get no business. So as that curational model that Design Hotels is, are you basically also like the last hope for everyone who wants to do something different and still be able to make this into success? Are you basically with the model, not only serving the customers in their need for something different, but also all those businesses who want to escape from that sameness, escape from if it's not instantly understood, it will fail stuff. So are you basically saving the culture in that respect to put it on a high level?

Stijn: I think in a sense, I always look at us as we are echoing culture. And I think we do this through the form of a hotel and hospitality, but it's all about our community. We are connectors. We connect people of different industries. And I think a great example is actually, I'm heading out later on today to Milan Design Week, where we have a fantastic installation in one of our member hotels with Universal Design Studios. And it's a 16 piece installation that we will give different forms and shapes. And it's all about how does this piece in different ways create communities and connections. So we have cameras above it and it kind of sees all the time what the different movements are around it. But again, I think in the essence, it's again, a way on how we connect architects, designers, people of the creative space through our members and through our hotels. So I think how we do it is kind of through hotels and through original hospitality, so to speak. But it's really much bigger than that. And that's what makes it tangible. It's what makes it real. It's what gives it purpose. It's what makes people really connect to it because it sticks. And as I said before, it doesn't leave you indifferent, which also means that you need visionaries that are ready to take a stand because you clearly might like one of it more than the other. So it's not really like, hey, I go to this place and if I'm in Poland or I'm in New York or I'm in Mexico City, I kind of have a consistent experience. That's completely different to what we do. So I do think we do a lot of consulting as well to our originals and to our community. But I would still think that the biggest power we have is one, we have that credibility of having done that. There's a proven track record of how Design Hotels has moved over more than three decades. And I think we have that power of that community and of connecting people out of different parts of the world, first of all, but different areas, different disciplines, different backgrounds and different mindsets. That is what really makes it sticky for our guests as well, because they love to connect, maybe locally, they love to connect in the events that we do. And Milan Design Week is just one example of that. We'll be connecting in the Architecture Biennale in Paris later on in May and then in Versailles and then in Venice. So we're really out there and we actually have now also since very recently a person who's really dedicated on that. So we have Katie who's really in charge of that community piece, which is so important and setting us apart, I would say.