Hotel investment and management experts Romain Semmel and Thibault Catala have set up Vertell Asset Management to acquire and manage hotels and resorts in Europe.
The two partners have over ten years of experience in the hotel investment industry, revenue management and digital sector, respectively.
Semmel as CEO and Catala as COO lead a six member management team specialised in hospitality investment and based in Switzerland.
Last year, they teamed up with a US investment fund to acquire ‘Arenas the Resorts’, a Swiss-based hotel group that owns five holiday resorts in the Swiss Alps and on the Mediterranean coast.
Romain Semmel said: ‘During my many years in the hotel investment sector, I have experienced the lack of alignment between investors and hotel asset managers and operators. By creating Vertell, our ambition is to provide our partners with our expertise in identifying and structuring complex investment transactions combined with operational know-how to create value on our investments.’
Thibault Catala added: ‘The hospitality sector is far behind in terms of digitization compared to other industries. At Vertell, we have implemented an innovative plug and play technology stack which, combined with our operational expertise, allows us to make more responsive and accurate management decisions to improve asset performance and profitability.’
The investment platform, which claims to be ‘disruptive’, will strategy of this platform, is to invest, alongside institutional and private investors, in distressed or undervalued assets, offering attractive investment returns through renovation, rebranding and operational improvements.
