To brand, or not to brand.

What rose to the top this week

Three patterns kept surfacing while browsing the past week’s news in Hospitality and Real Estate..

AI is no longer a bolt-on.

61% of short-term rental operators used it in 2025, up sharply year on year and higher again among the larger portfolios (Hostaway, 2026 STR Report). Only 14% of small hosts say it has actually helped them yet (PriceLabs Global Host Report, 2025). Adoption has run ahead of value capture.

Premium is not ageing. It is bifurcating.

The top of the market is splitting in two: branded and operator-led residences with deep service on one side, stripped-back design-led independents on the other. The middle is the dangerous place to sit.

East Africa is now the construction story, not just the safari one.

Africa’s hotel pipeline has crossed 104,000 rooms (W Hospitality Group, 2025). Nairobi alone has 4,000+ active short-term rental listings (AirROI, 2025), and East Africa holds the highest project actualisation rates on the continent.

The thread that ties them together: the era of hospitality will be defined less by what is added, and more by what is removed.

Less polish, more truth. Less menu, more room to breathe. Less clever AI bolted on, more deliberate use of the time it gives back.

Which brings me to next week’s panel in Nairobi.

That is the question on my panel at the East Africa Property Investment Summit in Nairobi — Wednesday 13 May, day one of a two-day programme. Every developer in this region is being asked it now. Often before the foundations are dug.

The numbers explain why. Branded residences have nearly tripled globally in the last decade — 323 schemes in 2015, around 910 by end-2025 (Savills 2025/26).

The average price premium over comparable unbranded stock is 33%, rising to 39% in resort markets. The Middle East and Africa is now the fastest-growing region in the segment, forecast to expand 270% by 2031.

Closer to home: Nairobi’s hotel pipeline is up 58% (Daily Nation, 2025). Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania hold the highest project actualisation rates on the continent — close to 80%. The institutional pipeline has crossed its first serious threshold.

But the question — to brand, or not to brand — flattens what is actually three.

Does this asset need a name on the door?

If so, whose?

And who is going to keep the promise that name makes — every day, for the next twenty years?

The third one is the one nobody talks about enough.

A brand on a building is a licence to charge a premium. It is also a contract with the buyer that says: someone is awake at the helm.

Three answers in the room

The international hotel brands bring distribution, taste codes, balance-sheet credibility. They sometimes miss the Swahili coast — the texture, the materials, the rhythm of a market that does not read like New York or Singapore.

The pure local operators know the soil. They sometimes do not have the choreography of a five-star institution behind them.

The most interesting answer is neither alone. It is a partnership that holds three things in one room: operations that actually run on the ground, African market fluency, and the standards of an international hotelier.

That composition does not exist off the shelf. It gets built deal by deal — by people who know each other’s work and trust each other’s judgement before the term sheet is signed.

So what?

First — the branded residences premium is real, but only where the brand actually operates the asset. Licensing the name and walking away is the version that disappoints the buyer in year three.

Second — in Africa specifically, the partner that wins holds all three competencies at once. Most ventures bring two of three. Two is not enough.

Third — I am learning this in real time on a project I will talk about properly when it lands. Brand is the easy part. The hard part is who runs the building on day 247.

So — to brand, or not to brand — is not really the question.

The question is: with whom, and on what terms.

I will be on stage at EAPI on Wednesday 13 May alongside the team from Hass Consult and the rest of the panel. If branded residences in this region are on your mind, come find me at the summit. I suspect a lot of us will be in the same room asking the same question, with very different answers.

Eleni

Sources

Savills, Branded Residences Annual Report 2025/26 — global supply (323 schemes in 2015, ~910 by end-2025); 33% average global premium; 39% in resort markets; CAGR 10.9% over the decade; 837 contracted schemes through 2032.

Savills, Branded Residences EMEA / MEA Regional Report 2025 — Middle East and Africa forecast to grow 270% by 2031; the strongest regional growth globally.

Knight Frank, Global Branded Residence Survey 2025 — premium range 20–35% above comparable unbranded stock.

Daily Nation (Kenya) — “Nairobi hotel pipeline up 58pc as global chains lead,” 2025.

W Hospitality Group, Africa Hotel Pipeline 2025 — 104,444 rooms across 577 hotels in development on the continent; Egypt and Morocco account for 45%+ of the total; Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania at the highest actualisation rates (~80% under construction).

Hostaway, 2026 Short-Term Rental Report — 61% of STR operators used AI in 2025; the adoption gap between AI users and non-users widened; adoption is materially higher among larger portfolios.

PriceLabs, Global Host Report 2025 — only 14% of small hosts (1–4 listings) say AI is actually helping them; both AI and non-AI users spend ~8.3 hrs per week managing listings.

AirROI, Nairobi STR Market Report 2025 — ~3,960 active short-term rental listings in Nairobi; market average nightly rate ~$54; 33.9% market occupancy; +8% YoY listings growth.