Design Hotels

Design Hotels

Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Hospitality
Founded	1993 (1993)
Headquarters	Berlin, Germany
Number of locations	300+ (2024)
Services	Hotels Sales Marketing Public Relations
Parent	Marriott International
Website	designhotels.com

Design Hotels is a hotel brand and hospitality consulting company owned by Marriott International and headquartered in Berlin, Germany. It is formed of privately owned and operated hotels.

History

Design Hotels was founded in 1993 as a California Corporation, Design Hotels Inc. by J. Peter Schweitzer and Claus Sendlinger. Claus was a part-owner (with Hans Peter Knodler and Oliver Jamitzky) of German full-service travel agency CO-ORDINATES GmbH, based in Augsburg. The two firms, and several others, consolidated in 1998 under the holding company lebensart.net GmbH, subsequently known as lebensart Global Networks AG in 1999. The holding company went public in Germany on Dec. 10, 1999.

In 2000 lebensart Global Networks AG, with Daniel Adams as the CFO raised sufficient capital to transfer trading from the over-the-counter (OTC) markets to the Börse München. In 2001 the firm re-branded itself as Design Hotels with 23 initial member hotels. That same year the firm completed the corporate merger of wholly owned subsidiaries ResExpress, Inc., Younger Direct Marketing, Inc., and lebensart technology, Inc. The company began trading under the name lebensart technology Arizona, Inc., with headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. In 2004, after several relocations of its headquarters from Arizona, California, to New York City, the firm settled its headquarters in its current location in Berlin, Germany, under the name Design Hotels AG.

In 2011, Starwood Hotels & Resorts acquired 72% ownership of Design Hotels AG. Following the merger of Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International, the latter acquired 100% of Design Hotels GmbH.

Accommodation

While there are over 300 members of Design Hotels worldwide, only a select few have decided to participate in the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty program. The following table lists hotels that have officially become a part of Marriott International.

		North America	Europe	Middle E. & Africa	Asia & Pacific	Caribbean Latin Am.		Total
2019	Properties	1	3					4
	Rooms	248	542					790
2020	Properties	5	7					12
	Rooms	853	799					1,652
2021	Properties	9	7	3				19
	Rooms	1,313	796	266				2,375
2022	Properties	10	26	6	2	6		50
	Rooms	1,385	2,123	619	581	146		4,854
2023	Properties	11	65	8	10	17		111
	Rooms	1,605	4,782	750	1,172	393		8,702

External links

Media related to Design Hotels at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website