Not only can the hotel and shopping centre industries learn from one another, they should also collaborate more closely in the future, Charlie MacGregor, CEO and founder, The Student Hotel, told delegates at the annual ISCS European Conference in Warsaw.
‘At The Student Hotel we have managed to bring different users together and create a very strong environment in our buildings,’ said MacGregor. ‘From A better food and beverage option to co-working spaces, our service-oriented model is creating loyalty and attracting new customers, not least thanks to the student spirit of our hotels.’
MacGregor’s business model, which allows students to stay for up to one year, also caters for hotel guests who want to book a single night.
‘We expected mums and dads and university professors to want to stay in our properties, but we’re actually finding a much broader demographic in our guests,’ he noted. ‘It turned out that people of all ages like the “student spirit” that they find, with our modern, flexible communal spaces and carefully curated restaurants and bars.’
The Student Hotel group now has properties across Europe and is growing rapidly in urban areas. This ultimately means a more inventive approach to creating space, and MacGregor mooted that the mixed-use projects of tomorrow might see the benefits of matching shopping centres with Student Hotel properties.
‘Our current minimum volume of rooms is 350 per project, but the other elements are in evolution,’ MacGregor said. ‘We realised that local businesses were coming in and trying to book tables in our restaurants for business meetings, so we added co-working spaces to integrate even better into our local communities.’
‘We can add value, we can add sustainability, and we can add a different kind of hotel experience,’ he concluded.
