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Serviced apartments
ON JULY 8-9 THIS YEAR, the great and good of the serviced apartment industry will descend on the five- star Montcalm London Marble Arch for the second annual Serviced Apartment Summit – media partner, a certain market-leading publication known as Buying Business Travel. If early 2014 trends continue, it
should be a joyous occasion, and not just because of this magazine’s support. Talk to almost anyone in the apartments sector, and the optimism is almost overwhelming. Go Native founder Guy Nixon
is a case in point. “The market is really strong at the moment,” he says. “This year has kicked off with a lot more gusto than at the same time last year. Most of our clients are growing, they are recruiting, they are training, they are travelling – and when all these things start to happen, you see a growing demand for serviced apartments.” He’s not alone. SACO sales director Ben Harper thinks that “the state of the market is great”, while Silverdoor’s commercial director Chris Gee says business is up “in the region of 25 per cent” and “things are generally looking rosier”. Jo Layton, now managing director of group commercial sales with The Apartment Service (TAS), admits to feeling “pretty good”, while Oakwood Worldwide sales director Claire Barrie says demand for apartments is “currently really strong”. And so it goes on. James Foice, managing director of the Association of Serviced Apartment Providers (ASAP), says his organisation’s 70-plus member companies “are very optimistic that 2014 should be an excellent year”.
BUYER’S VIEW
“We haven’t seen an increase in the use of serviced apartments in recent years, mainly because they are thin on the ground in our most-frequented locations, but also because apartments do not have much of a GDS presence. In our company, they’re mainly used by human resources dealing with cases of relocation.”
UK travel manager, manufacturing Oakwood’s Claire Barrie
STRONG POSITION So far, so good. But a hapless hack desperate to cobble together 3,000- odd hopefully interesting words on serviced apartments needs muck to stir – all this consensual glee is
“On the supply side, we still have issues – supply simply isn’t keeping up with demand”
deeply irritating. Go Native’s Guy Nixon is scant help. His biggest headache is securing sufficient space to accommodate the punters hammering at his corporate door. “On the supply side, we still have issues – supply simply isn’t keeping up with demand. Part of the problem in our industry has been the lack of large buildings, so you have a lack of ability to build the brand. As we now move into larger blocks, licensed for short stays, where we can control the look and feel and design of the building, we are beginning to be in a much stronger position.”
Bridgstreet's Michael Schumacher World Tower, New Delhi
Go Native’s latest project, in the City of London, opens for business in April. Another 135 apartments, this time in east London, come onstream later this year, and a third project, next to the Tate Modern on the capital’s South Bank, will welcome its first guests in 2015. “We have got around 250 serviced apartments opening in the next 18 months, but I would like it to be double that,” says Nixon. “Trying to secure new business opportunities where we can influence the design and feel is the most exciting part of what we do, but for me it’s also the most nail-biting part.”
So where are all these customers coming from? Sabrina Carparelli, head of EMEA sales at Skyline Worldwide, is in no doubt that the economic recovery has a lot to do with it. “London is a particularly interesting market at the moment – there is currently so much relocation because this is where all the major companies are based,” she says.
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