SPEAKER

Georg Schlegel

European Development Strategy
Louvre Hotels

Georg Schlegel started his hotel career with the French group Accor (Novotel, Ibis, Etap,Mercure,Sofitel) in 1992 as a marketing manager for the Ibis Hotel brand in Germany. From 1995 he was in charge for setting up development of the franchise business in Germany, Austria and Switzerland where the group had at that time only company managed hotels. Besides his responsibilities for the group he hold various positions in the German franchise community, held speeches and wrote articles for special interest magazines about hotel franchising. His focus was most of the time on limited-service hotels. He successfully increased the number of franchised hotels for the group until 2002 and laid ground to more awareness of hotel franchising in the German speaking markets. Thereafter, he joined the Intercontinental Hotels Group as a development director overseeing the development for Germany, Austria, Moldavia, all Back Sea and Caspian Sea countries, including Turkey, Kazakhstan and various countries in the central Asia. From 2008 he was responsible for the development of the Select Services Brands Aloft, Element and Four Points by Sheraton for EAME for Starwood Hotels. In his role he was in charge of getting the Starwood Brands adapted to EMEA and rolled out with a focus on franchise development. Furthermore, he was setting up the franchise base for a region where in the past Starwood predominantly signed management agreements. From 2013 he joined Choice Hotels International, as Managing Director for Central and Eastern Europe where he boosted development in the region for Choice Hotels: Entry into the Turkish Market and restructuring the Hotel Portfolio in Central Europe. Mostly with “out of the box” new- type of Partnership agreements. He was well overseeing the Master Franchise Relationship in the ME for Choice Hotels. Since 2021 he supports Louvre Hotel on strategic development across Europe with a special focus on the Norther European Region, including Benelux and Germany. During his carrier, he was involved in the negotiation and conclusion of a tripel digit number of franchise and management projects across the region. He is based in Munich, Germany.