“For the 10th time, Apartmentservice has presented the SO!APART Awards for the best serviced apartment concepts in the DACH region. The winners in 2023 are: the Revo Munich, the Black F Tower in Freiburg, the Adapt Apartments in Berlin and the Freytag in Hamburg. For the first time, there were two double winners and two sustainable prizes.”
SO!APART has been the most important specialist conference for the serviced apartments segment in German-speaking countries since 2013. On 22 and 23 November 2023, the most important players in the segment came together in Leipzig at the Felix Suites on Augustusplatz to explore ways of creating further momentum. Serviced apartments are a modern hotel offering with more space and a kitchen compared to traditional hotels, and generally fewer services. Numerous exciting concepts have established themselves on the market in recent years, inviting guests to enjoy short and, above all, longer stays as if in a second home.
At this year’s SO!APART, these hotels won in a festive setting:
Das Freytag in Hamburg won in the “small fine” category with up to 50 serviced apartments. The building focuses on a small, refined old building concept with a salon culture, as Heinrich Böhm, Senior Designer and Partner at JOI-Design Innenarchitekten, emphasised in his laudatory speech on stage last week.
Revo München in Munich, which opened last year, was honoured both as the best newcomer in the “new and special” category and in the “large and grand – aparthotel” category. “The new high-rise building with around 600 serviced apartments and rooms has managed to create a special cosmos – with an enormous variety and attention to detail that is unparalleled in our segment,” said jury member Sylvie Konzack, who is editor-in-chief of both the trade magazine SO!APART insight and Bleisure Traveller.
Anett Gregorius, founder and owner of Apartmentservice and organiser of SO!APART, presented the award to Revo Munich in the “new and special” category: “I was last a guest here during a trade fair and was impressed by the connection and the peace and quiet in the building every morning and evening. There are usually around 500 people here at any one time, not least spread across the exciting communal areas, including the cinema and coworking level and the feng shui courtyard,” she emphasised in her laudatory speech.
Two prizes also went to the Black F Tower in Freiburg …
“We were already enthusiastic about the brand’s first building in Freiburg in 2021,” said jury member Uwe Niemann, Head of Market Hotel Financing at Deutsche Hypo NORD/LB Real Estate Finance. For him, the Black F Tower, not far from the first building, is another real development and wins in the “large and grand” (apartment building) category.
The jury members Henrik von Bothmer, Head of Operated Living at Union Investment, and architect Helmut Dörfer, Partner at Dörfer Grohnmeier Architekten Partnerschaft, emphasised that the new construction concept and the way the building is managed are also exemplary in terms of sustainability. They presented the second award for the Black F Tower in the “sustainable and special” category – and also had a surprise trophy for another building: for the first time, the SO!APART Sustainability Award was presented for a new build and an existing property. The Adapt Apartments in Berlin impressed the jury as an existing property. The apartment complex opted for a clay façade when it was built over ten years ago, for example, and still pursues a far-reaching sustainability strategy in its operations today.
Two public prizes for Berlin and Dortmund
The winners in the categories “The most popular small hotel” and “The most popular large hotel” were decided exclusively by the public in an online vote. Christoph Carnier, President of the business travel association VDR, presented the prizes to PM-AM Apartments in Dortmund and to Adapt Apartments in Berlin as the “most popular large hotel“, which in turn took home two awards on the evening. The property is located in Berlin-Adlershof near the TV studios and has hosted countless production teams over the years.
Bleisure Traveller has been a proud media partner of the event for years and congratulates the winners.
Photos: © HAFENCITYSTUDIOS, Revo München, Adapt Apartments, Black F/Baschi Bender, das Freytag, PM-AM Apartments
