Luxury hotel collection Design Hotels looks to Apac for growth, adding four hotels in Greater China to its stable
The Berlin-headquartered collection adds more than 14 hotels in the Asia-Pacific region in 2025, accounting for about 28% of its growth
[SINGAPORE] Design Hotels, a luxury and boutique hotel collection, is re-entering the mainland Chinese market with four new member hotels.
Partnership agreements with Habo Hotel Shanghai, NOA Hotel Shenzhen and NOA Hotel Beijing have been confirmed and will be added to the collection’s portfolio by the end of this year.
This follows the recently announced addition of The ArcadiaPlace, Lugu Lake, in Sichuan.
Design Hotels’ return to the mainland Chinese market comes in a year of strong growth for the collection, said managing director Stijn Oyen.
“In 2025, Asia-Pacific is where we’ve seen the most growth, and I’m convinced that we will continue into next year,” Oyen told The Business Times in an interview. “This year, we also celebrated our return to mainland China, which we are very excited about.”
Design Hotels had exited the market in 2020, shortly after its last member hotel dropped off amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
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This year, the Berlin-headquartered collection added more than 14 hotels in the Asia-Pacific region, accounting for about 28 per cent of its growth.
Founded in 1993 by Claus Sendlinger, Design Hotels’ focus has been to work with design-led hotels. The collection was wholly acquired by Marriott International in February 2021.
The collection, in Oyen’s words, is not exactly a “growth vehicle”. It functions more like a consultancy, helping to raise visibility for independent hotels and making money from fees from member properties and through booking commissions.
Design Hotels declined to reveal its revenue.
“We basically get rewarded on the business we would bring to a property,” said Oyen.
The collection’s stable of hotels has been growing. At the end of 2021, it had about 260 members, and it will round off 2025 with about 326 members.
This expansion – which comes even as Design Hotels says it grows thoughtfully and chooses its members carefully – coincides with changing traveller preferences as well.
A recent report from real estate firm JLL’s hotels and hospitality research team noted that lifestyle hotels will account for 18 per cent of all hotel rooms that open globally in 2025, an increase of 10 percentage points from 2,000.
The same report stated that lifestyle hotels could increasingly become a cornerstone of the modern lodging industry, especially as the experience economy grows.
To Oyen, these changing preferences are “right up our street”, as travellers evolve and start to seek options beyond big hotel chains.
Design Hotels currently has 39 “live” bookable hotels in Asia-Pacific, out of its 326 hotel members globally. That number is expected to rise with the new additions this year, and as the brand looks to the region for more growth.
Apart from mainland China, Design Hotels has also re-entered India.
“People are looking for places they’ve not been before,” said Oyen. “I touched on China and India, but you know there’s opportunity in Australia, Vietnam and the Philippines that’s also up and coming. That’s why I think the opportunity is just really amazing.”
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