Minor Hotels is a global hospitality leader with over 640 hotels and resorts across six continents.
Within this portfolio, the city of Amsterdam stands out as hosting an unusually large cluster of Minor properties: 13 hotels across six brands (Anantara, Avani, NH Hotels, NH Collection, nhow, Tivoli).
Amsterdam attracts
Europe is Minor’s largest region, accounting for more than half of its portfolio, and Amsterdam is a market with strong corporate, leisure, and MICE demand.
In 2025, Amsterdam recorded a record number of hotel stays - 22 million visitors of which 85 per cent were international - according to a Colliers note.
Most Minor city destinations have between one and five hotels, even in major capitals. The higher concentration of properties in Amsterdam is largely a legacy of Minor’s 2018 acquisition of NH Hotel Group.
Lifestyle rebranding
One of these Amsterdam properties recently underwent a renovation and rebranding programme that delivered positive outcomes not only for Minor as the operator but also for the freeholder.
It’s a story that took Minor Hotels into the finals of the HAMA Europe Asset Management Achievement Award 2026, co-sponsored by Questex Hospitality and HotStats.
The 163-room hotel in question originally opened as an NH Hotel in 2001 in a very attractive location near Amsterdam’s world-famous Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum. Up until 2025 the property had not undergone any major refurbishment.
Carla Alaman, SVP of portfolio management for Minor Hotels, Europe and America, explained: “Because we were operating at the same time another 12 properties in the city, most under the NH brand, we saw the opportunity to introduce our lifestyle brand, Avani.”
With the excellent location and good room sizes, the introduction of the Avani lifestyle millennial-minded brand into the strongly performing Amsterdam market made absolute sense.
Bid ask gap
“On top of that, we were operating that property under a long lease and the freehold owner, Caransa Groep, a long established Dutch real estate investor, was struggling at the time to sell it, because there was a mismatch between their price expectations and the conditions of the property,” Alaman explained.
The key goals were first to modernise the property, improve guest experience, and introduce the Avani brand to the Amsterdam market.
The aim was also to improve operational efficiency and sustainability, and ultimately, increase the value of the asset, both for Minor Hotels as the tenants and for the landlord Caransa Groep.
Modernisation
Minor Hotels embarked on a refurbishment at a budget of €8.6m, modernising the rooms’ fixtures and fittings, soft goods and stylings, and the air conditioning and control systems. Bathrooms received partial refurbs, converting around half from baths to showers. The public areas got a full makeover in the modern styling of the Avani brand.
“During the renovations, we had two opportunities,” said Alaman. “Firstly, while keeping the same number of rooms, we decided to redefine the categorical mix to improve the quality of our room mix.”
Rooms range in size from 23 sqm for a standard double room to 40 sqm family rooms. The top two floors have floor-to-ceiling windows, with canal and city views.
New F&B concept
“Secondly, we realised that the restaurant was not profitable enough, so we decided to switch to a new concept, the Avani Pantry, which was easy to implement. The grab-and-go self-serve snack concept is open 24 hours and has helped us improve our profitability while perfectly aligning with the young lifestyle rebrand that we were undertaking.”
The Avani Pantry provides grab-and-go smoothies and baked goods in the morning, salads, wraps and sandwiches throughout the day, as well as pasta and pizza and snacks throughout the night. Compared to a traditional restaurant, the concept delivers higher margins, lower labour costs, and better alignment with guest behaviour.
It was a complex refurbishment, said Alaman, which necessitated closing the hotel for six weeks. “We decided to execute the works during the low season (January and February) plus we had to execute the works in three different phases to minimise the disruption,” she said.
Brand new opening
Since reopening, Avani Museum Quarter Amsterdam, has delivered positive results, not only in its financial performance but also in terms of customer perception and sustainability.
Alaman said: “We improved ADR by 17 percent and RevPAR by 19 percent and GOP by 10 percent. I have to say that we were already operating under our NH brand, so we were good enough already, but we were able to improve the financial performance after the refurbishment.”
“We also improved our penetration index by 22 percent, but the most important thing is that the guests perceived that improvement. We now have scores above nine across all the leading platforms, and a good quality rating compared to our main competitor set,” she added.
From an ESG point of view, energy consumption at the hotel has dropped eight percent which contributed to GOP conversion.
Successful sale
“And most importantly, as I mentioned at the beginning, the owner was struggling to sell. Well, just two months after the refurbishment was finished, the hotel was sold to a new investor, so it was a good result, both for us as the tenants and for the landlord.”
In September 2025, the owners of the freehold, Caransa Groep, successfully sold the hotel for €85m to Pontegadea, the investment arm of Amancio Ortega, Europe’s second wealthiest individual and the founder of the clothes retailer Zara.
All quotes taken from the HAMA Europe Asset Management Achievement Award 2026 held in Berlin during IHIF EMEA.