EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
DEFINING
A NEW BRAND
OF UNIQUENESS
Laurence Onfroy - CEO & Founder of TemptingPlaces,
the World’s Most Unique Boutique Hotels talks about her
group’s mission and objectives
W
e put the obvious question
to Laurence Onfroy…
“Just what is your brand
all about?”
We’re a soft brand for boutique hotels
that have been conceived and made
by visionary owners with an aim of
transforming the hospitality industry.
They’re a new generation of hoteliers.
Before, there were those who were into
“traditional luxury”, with high-class
service and gastronomy and so on. But
the new generation is more concerned
with “experiential” or “immersive”
travel, and there was a gap in the
market.
There was no brand to help them to
leverage their image, to gain visibility
and structure themselves. So, with 140
hotels in 34 countries, we’re really a
community of independent hoteliers,
and we’re growing year after year.
But we try also to retain a human
dimension.
When I started the company, I had a
vision to structure this market, because
the independent hospitality sector is
very fragmented. So our mission is both
to structure and clarify the market. Our
partners now rely on our selection
and standards to reference our hotels
worldwide. I launched TemptingPlaces
in 2010, and last year, we opened an
Asia Pacific regional office in Malaysia.
We saw that some very few of
your hotels are also part of other
groupings. What extra value do you
add to the market?
Actually, we cater to another segment.
While we have some hotels that have
dual affiliation, there are very few. What
makes us different is that we were
born digital, and we’ve just released a
printed guide. The other brands were
born with printed guides, and they
are transforming themselves with the
arrival of digital, which is very difficult
as they already had a strong inertia in
the direction they had been taking,
because they are very big, so it’s not
easy to face all those changes. As we
are in the digital world, we bring our
hoteliers another way to structure their
sales and marketing aligned with a
digital approach, giving them access to
technology.
What are the selection criteria?
Important factors include size – they
should have less than 100 rooms, and
we audit the hotels for a broad number
Laurence
Onfroy
CEO & Founder,
TemptingPlaces
