The best serviced apartment concepts of 2021
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The serviced apartment industry honored the best providers and concepts with the SO!APART AWARDS 2021 in Munich on Wednesday, November 10. The winners in the category “New and Special” included the KPM Hotel & Residences in Berlin as best aparthotel and the Black F – Serviced Apartments in Freiburg as best serviced apartment house 2021.
The B29 Büroma-Apart Suites Esslingen in Esslingen am Neckar received the prize in the sustainability category. The jury gave the Special Award to the new brand Das Schlafwerk. In addition, the innovation prize for start-ups was awarded again: In the “Nest of the Flamingo”, The Base Saas won all the jury votes, while the audience chose theCubes.
The award ceremony took place during the hybrid industry meeting SO!APART at the Adina Apartment Hotel Munich in Munich.
After a Corona-related award break in 2020, venues that opened between 1 January 2019 and 30 June 2021 were eligible to apply this year. “The field of applicants was impressive after the difficult Corona months,” says flat service owner Anett Gregorius, who has been organising the SO!APART Awards since 2013. “The segment took another big leap in further differentiating brands and target groups. The nominees and award winners fit perfectly with the motto of our SO!APART this year ‘The (new) desire for serviced flats’.”
New and special
The KPM Hotel & Residences, best apartment hotel in the category “New and Special”, represents a new, already strongly established premium concept in the centre of Berlin, emphasised Sylvie Konzack, editor-in-chief of SO!APART insight, in her speech. Elements such as the lockable mobile kitchen cube show how flexible flat concepts can be, even in the luxury sector.
Uwe Niemann, Head of Market Hotel Finance Deutsche/Hypo NORD/LB Real Estate Finance, underlined the stringency, passionate depth and entrepreneurial courage of founder Annabell Unmüßig in his speech for Black F, best serviced apartment building in the category “New and Special”. She has developed the Black Forest as a modern living-on-a-time concept and, after the newcomer in Freiburg, is already realising other houses in southern Germany.
Particularly sustainable
Henrik von Bothmer, Senior Investment Manager Micro-Living at Union Investment, and Helmut Dörfer, partner at Dörfer Grohnmeier Architekten, presented the SO!APART Award to the B29 Büroma-Apart Suites Esslingen in the Sustainability category, emphasizing the concept’s holistic approach.
A concept with charisma
The jury dedicated the Special Award to the new brand Das Schlafwerk by DQuadrat Living (among others HARBR hotels and boarding houses). The company had launched a serviced flat house concept in Korntal-Münchingen at the beginning of 2021, which is targeted at tradesmen and fitters at first. The jury praised the specially developed building and room concept as well as the depth of detail of the hospitality concept – as an innovative brand from the segment for the segment with charisma. Sabine Galas, editor-in-chief of Business Traveller, emphasized in her laudatory speech that the business travel world consists not only of project managers, sales people and IT specialists, but also of craftsmen, fitters and construction workers, which is why it is right and long overdue to make this target group a tailor-made offer: “We as the jury think this is a great approach, a thoroughly coherent concept and a completely new product for a target group that the segment has not focused on so far.
The pitch winner of the “Nest of the Flamingo”.
Three start-ups with an innovative product or service for the segment were also entered in the race by the three-member jury of the “Nest of the Flamingo”. The Base Saas was very convincing during the pitch. The startup has developed an AI-based co-living app and will implement the pilot at The Base’s first co-living property in Berlin-Pankow.
The audience chose theCubes as their favorite – fully furnished services apartments, sustainably built from shipping containers.
In 2021, the jury at the “Nest of the Flamingo” consisted of Hannibal DuMont Schütte (co-founder of Stayery), Sandra Lederer (editor-in-chief of Hotelbau magazine) and Jörg Schönfeld (co-initiator of Apartment.Base 4.0).
The lead remains untouched
At the end of the awards ceremony, host Anett Gregorius drew a positive conclusion: “More than ever, serviced apartment concepts that had a clear positioning, a consistent story and innovative detailed solutions scored points this year. This is exactly what will be important in the coming years to maintain the segment’s lead,” says Anett Gregorius, adding, “In this sense, I would once again like to sincerely thank all our partners at SO!APART and especially Union Investment with its commitment as Partner Exclusive – their belief in the segment and their promotion of the market is great.”
