With 10 properties open and a staggering 50 more in development, Kerten Hospitality is quietly staging a revolution in the global hotel industry. By ditching rigid brand templates in favour of deeply localised, bespoke experiences, they are capturing the hearts of modern travellers. Anirban Dasgupta, Chief Editor of Traveller’s World, sat down with the group’s visionary leader, Mr Antony Doucet, CxO, to discuss his journey from running plates on a Caribbean cruise ship to managing VIPs in Paris, and why he believes the future of luxury lies in spaces money can’t buy.
Q: Kerten Hospitality has an incredible pipeline right now, with about 50 properties under development alongside your 10 open locations. In a world dominated by massive, standardized hotel chains, what is your guiding philosophy?
Our philosophy is simple: we develop hotels that are entirely bespoke to the exact place they sit. When we arrive in a new destination, our first job is to deeply understand the environment. Who is the target audience? What does the existing hospitality landscape look like? Crucially, we also look at what is coming to that destination over the next 5 to 10 years. When you open a hotel, it’s for the long haul.
Once we map out that ecosystem, we ask ourselves: What can we bring that is brand new or entirely different to this destination? Because of this, we don’t have rigid “brand standards” in our group. We have brand guidelines, which we dynamically adapt to the local culture and geography.
Q: Can you give us a real-world example of how that flexibility translates into financial or critical success?
Look no further than our most successful property, the Cloud Seven Hotel & Residence in Aqaba, Jordan. When we analyzed the landscape there, we realized the market was split exactly 50/50. Half of the guests were domestic Jordanian tourists, and the other half were international travellers doing the iconic Wadi Rum and Petra tours.
These two groups have completely different needs, desires, and behaviors. Jordanians traveling within their own country want to feel like they’ve escaped somewhere exotic and entirely different. International travellers, on the other hand, want that authentic, Middle Eastern, Oriental feeling.
Our brief to the architect and interior designer was a unique cross-pollination: “Marrakesh meets Mykonos on the Red Sea.” Marrakesh brought the Oriental elements; Mykonos and Santorini provided the Greek island vibe, which feels incredibly exotic to locals. The result? It was exotic enough for Jordanians and authentic enough for international travellers. Today, that four-star property is number one in the destination according to STR data, which measures occupancy and room rates.
Q: Your path to the C-suite wasn’t a corporate fast-track; you truly built your career from the ground up. Tell us about your beginnings.
I was born into hospitality—my family was in the business. I went to hotel school in France, and right after graduating, I wanted to jump into the big international hotel groups and climb the ladder. But there was a major hurdle: my English was absolutely terrible!
To fix that, I took a job on a cruise ship in the Caribbean for two years. Because my English was so poor, I couldn’t even start as a waiter; I was a food runner for the first couple of months. I worked my way up to waiter, then captain waiter. Once my English improved, I moved to Switzerland and worked a few jobs as a barman, which I absolutely loved.
Q: That journey eventually led you to luxury giants like Hyatt, and a very intense role dealing with the world’s biggest celebrities. What was that era like?
I joined the Hyatt group at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport for a two-year corporate traineeship. It was a massive airport hotel, and I rotated departments every six months—starting in stewarding (dishwashing and kitchen maintenance), then moving to banqueting, room service, and eventually banquet sales, which is where I originally wanted to be.
From there, I was promoted to the pre-opening team of the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme. For five years, I was put in charge of VIPs and celebrities. My lifestyle became incredibly intense—I had virtually no private life.
I was constantly traveling between New York, Los Angeles, and London to bring stars to the property. I managed the VIP relation department on-site. When Madonna stayed, or when Shah Rukh Khan visited, we orchestrated their entire experience.
Q: Spending half a decade catering to the ultra-wealthy must change your perspective on what “luxury” actually means!
It completely reshaped my understanding of human desire. When you take care of demanding celebrities and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, you realize something profound: They want the things that money cannot buy.
They can buy any physical object. What they actually crave are curated experiences and genuine emotions.
In the lobby of the Park Hyatt Paris, my passion was being a human connector. If I had a Mr. B sitting on one side of the lobby and a Mr. C on the other, and I knew they shared a niche business interest or could become great friends, I would bridge the gap and introduce them. The lobby became the place to meet in Paris because we built human links. If a guest from New York was in Paris for the first time because his wife loved fashion, and I saw an influential fashion insider having coffee nearby, I’d connect them. I realized I wanted to push this human-centric, emotional approach to the absolute next level, which is exactly what I found the freedom to do at Kerten Hospitality.
Q: Delivering a deeply emotional, bespoke guest experience requires an incredibly empathetic staff. How do you motivate a team to perform at that level?
You’ve hit on our core secret. Before we ever discuss the guest experience, we talk extensively about the employee experience. If you are pushing a bespoke, human-centric approach, who is the one actually delivering it? It’s the staff. If you don’t teach, train, educate, and genuinely take care of your people, it is mathematically impossible for them to deliver the guest experience you want.
For us, the employee experience is paramount. We look closely at their accommodation. What does it look like? What is the design of the staff canteen? A staff member’s 30 or 45-minute lunch break needs to be an enjoyable, restorative moment, not just a rushed window to feed their stomach in a dull, grey basement. If you want a guy or a girl to walk out onto the floor with a massive, genuine smile, you have to provide them with happiness during their downtime first.
Q: Let’s talk about your expansion plans. Word is that Kerten Hospitality has its sights set heavily on India. What draws you to the market?
We have a deep sentimental connection with India, alongside an obvious business alignment.
It’s the market everyone wants to be in right now because of its sheer economic dynamism and growth.
But our approach to India is different. We aren’t targeting the primary tier-one mega-cities.
Our priority is tier-two and tier-three cities, and beautiful remote locations where we can truly make a tangible difference and introduce something entirely fresh.
Q: When you look at the established hospitality giants already operating in India, where does Kerten fit in?
We mapped out the Indian market and saw a clear pattern. You have the massive international hotel chains on one side, and you have the historic, ultra-luxury domestic brands of India on the other. But when you look at the four-star and five-star segment for bespoke luxury—properties that are highly individualized, creative, and localized—there is an empty space. That is the exact whitespace Kerten intends to occupy.
Personally, I’ve been traveling all over the country to scout opportunities—Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Kerala, and I just returned from the mountain landscapes of the Himalayas. We see immense opportunity across all these regions.
Q: How close are we to seeing the first Kerten property break ground in India?
Very close. We officially started our ground operations here just six months ago, and we already have a permanent team of three to four people based in India actively securing Hotel Management Agreements (HMAs).
We have a couple of very serious “hot leads”—local hotel owners who share our vision. Right now, we are inviting these owners to fly out and stay at our existing international properties. We want them to physically touch, feel, and experience a Cloud Seven or a The House Hotel. Once they experience the emotions and the unique spaces we create, they understand exactly what Kerten Hospitality is all about. We hope to have some major news to announce very soon.
