Hospitality Brand Placemakr Begins U.S. Expansion
Placemakr, a tech-enabled hospitality platform and operator, recently announced the opening of two pop up hotels under its WhyHotel brand: one in Virginia and one in California. These hotels offer guests the ability to experience hotel amenities and services, while staying in fully furnished, spacious apartments equipped with kitchens, living rooms, and bedrooms many times with walk-in closets.
"The future of hospitality and home is flexible. Our unique model bridges the hotel and apartment world, creating an offering more valuable than either product alone," said Jason Fudin, CEO and Co-founder of Placemakr.
Following the company's recent funding round, the company is pursuing aggressive growth into new geographic locations in partnership with organizations dedicated to innovating the multifamily and hospitality industry. Their model includes pop-up partnerships, property management agreements, and real estate acquisitions.
Placemakr's key driver is the belief that the future of hospitality lies in flexible living. As new societal norms form quickly, like remote work, consumer demand for flexible living options has rapidly increased. Placemakr is fulfilling the needs for the next generation of living and staying, while simultaneously increasing property value and NOI for its real estate partners. Placemakr offers two product types: a pop-up hotel experience which will now be known as WhyHotel, by Placemakr, and the company's collection of hospitality living properties. The latter, at varying tiers of amenities, will be known as Placemakr Premier, Placemakr, and A Placemakr Experience. In addition to continuing to partner with building developers and investors through property management, the company will look to expand its portfolio of owned properties, like Placemakr Premier SoBro, under this new umbrella.
"When we started the company, we envisioned a flexible future, where the needs surrounding where we live and how we travel converge. We realized that this would create the opportunity to engineer a new real estate asset class that bridges the hotel and apartment world and is more valuable than either product alone. Well, that future came even quicker than we imagined and has allowed Placemakr to be the premier brand, tech-stack, operator, and real estate investor in this new world. We are excited to double down on our growth to meet this market," said Fudin. "By investing in our flex platform technology, scaling our operations, investing in our brand and expanding our portfolio of owned and managed real estate, we are positioning the company to be the leader in what promises to be a multi-trillion dollar asset class."