The Serviced Apartment Summit Middle East and Africa is the leading B2B conference for the region focused on serviced apartments, extended stay hotels, branded residences, holiday homes and short-term rentals. The 2019 Summit took place on September 16th 2019, at EMAAR’s Rove Dubai Marina, and Letswork – one of the locations of the UAE’s largest community of co-working spaces. The Middle East and Africa regions continue to actively broaden their tourism and hospitality accommodation offerings to address increasingly diverse and more sophisticated traveler requirements.

HoCoSo were proud silver sponsors of SASMEA 2019

Jonathan Humphries, Chairman and Owner of HoCoSo, and the HoCoSo team specialize in the extended-stay hospitality market, luxury and boutique hotels, and resort developments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Jonathan took center stage at SASMEA to first introduce Stay Kooook: a new and award-winning hospitality concept developed by HoCoSo, [can we say this? Should we say “that HoCoSo has been working on]which has been designed for the future of urban living. The “super-flexible” micro apartments (22m2) combine moving walls, on-point technology and vibrant, atmospheric shared spaces. Stay Kooook was developed for SV Hotel and has recently been awarded the Swiss Hotel Innovation Awards. It has now been nominated for Best Concept category for the prestigious Worldwide Hospitality Awards  – VOTE HERE!

Jonathan also hosted a development workshop, which brought investors, operators and hotel executives’ together to create a totally unique extended stay experience. “As an industry, we know the guest wants more than just products and services anchored around the room, F&B and local amenities/services. We need to look at where the pain points in a guest journey exist – that’s where we have an opportunity as an industry to innovate and improve the individual experience of each guest. And that’s what people pay a premium for, because you’ve gone above and beyond your standard business model.”

The Global Nomad

In an interview with George Sell, Editor-in-chief for Serviced Apartment News, Jonathan was asked about the “Global Nomad”.

“Whilst there is still something of a romantic notion of a nomad’s freedom to live, work, travel, play, there is a practical driver of the trend,” says Jonathan. Corporations are looking to retain agility in their workforce and cost base, to enable them to respond to the next disruptive innovation. So “trusted advisor/supplier” networks are growing. “Yet although the future of work revolves around flexibility and digital infrastructure, the world still operates across a wide range of physical borders and frontiers, which do  not make it easy for these digital nomads.” The hospitality sector with its physical assets has the opportunity to provide innovative solutions that global nomads will value (and pay for) because these services make their travels and stays easier and more comfortable, whilst retaining their ability to deliver wherever they are in the world..

Watch the interview:

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About HoCoSo   

HoCoSo are advisors with a difference. We create tailor-made and innovative solutions for clients’ hospitality-led projects by bringing together the optimum team of sector specialists. Jonathan Humphries, Chairman and Owner of HoCoSo, and his direct team specialize in the extended-stay, co-living, and hotel-alternatives hospitality market; luxury, lifestyle and boutique hotels; and resort developments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Our strengths lie in the following core services: 

  • Product & Concept Creation, for portfolio & individual asset developments 
  • Strategic Development Projects with a focus on new-market / new-concept business expansion planning, operator selection, market and financial feasibility studies
  • Transformative Asset Management for brand re-positioning, asset re-evaluation and concept re-structuring
  • Hospitality Education for companies and academic institutions, with a focus on bespoke course development, training and teaching 
  • Workshops, Keynotes and Conference Moderating for boards, leading international conferences and incubators