The Social Hub is 12 years in to its mission of providing hospitality while doing good, and the Netherlands-based company is getting the attention of investors.
The company was founded as The Student Hotel with the aim of providing students with better-quality accommodations. In 2022, the company changed its name to The Social Hub to broaden its appeal beyond students to co-working guests, business and leisure travelers and digital nomads. But its emphasis on sustainability and community causes are still a key piece of its brand identity.
The Social Hub describes its approach as a “social impact-driven model.” In October, the company became a B Corp business, a certification of a business meeting “high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, accountability, ethical practices and sustainable practices,” according to B Corporation, the certifying organization.
Today, The Social Hub has a portfolio of 21 hotels across Europe. Eight are in its home base of The Netherlands, but it has presence in seven other countries. The company has five hotels in the pipeline, including three hotels opening in Florence, Rome and Porto, Portugal, in early 2025.
The Social Hub's first hotel opened in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and the company has come a long way since then, said Chief Operations and Commercial Officer Marion Koopman.
“We quickly evolved from a unique, community-centric student-housing proposition to pioneering a hybrid hospitality model that brings together very diverse and perhaps unexpected audiences under one roof: students, hotel guests, co-workers, businesspeople and locals,” she said.
Operating in thriving cultural locations and doing good continue to be drivers of the brand. The Social Hub demonstrates “to municipalities the power of a model focused on openness and community building to help counter pertinent issues faced by countries such as low-quality tourism,” she added.
That model also attracts investment and financing opportunities, Koopman said. Last year, The Social Hub refinanced €566 million ($596 million) under a green loan finance framework with Aareal Bank and Rabobank to help fuel growth.
“Our hope is that we can prove that the real estate and hospitality industries can be part of a movement for positive change and that ultimately it makes good business sense,” she said.
Thanks to its initial growth and recent financing rounds, The Social Hub will both own and operate its three new hotels opening in early 2025, a move that has doubled its portfolio in Italy allows the company to enter a new market with Portugal.
Koopman said the Florence and Rome hotels are both financed in part by an agreement with UniCredit for €145 million in social and environmental impact financing and a €54 million green guarantee from Italian financial and insurance company SACE, which specializes in supporting the Italian economy.
The Social Hub’s hotels are carefully chosen, Koopman said.
“From a design perspective, our spaces always been created with the idea of fostering connections between and building communities. [They] have been redesigned to further blur boundaries between our audiences yet not lose the soul of our brand. For example, we are currently working on piloting a new elevated room offering in The Social Hub Amsterdam City which is already receiving very positive feedback, and we hope to begin rolling out across our portfolio soon,” Koopman said.
Most of The Social Hub's hotels — including the upcoming trio — are new builds, but that is not always the case, she said.
“We have an interest in finding spaces that could be converted. We absolutely see an opportunity in the office market, considering the challenges that sector is currently facing,” she added.
In early 2024, The Social Hub debuted in the United Kingdom with a hotel in Glasgow, and Koopman said she is keen to expand further across the country.
The Social Hub is looking at future hotels in both Paris and Milan. Koopman added the diversity of the company's portfolio goes hand in hand with the diversity and changing nature of the brand’s guests.
“We’ve seen our core audience base change and become increasingly more diverse, with a great deal of expansion in the B2B space, an area which we are focusing a great deal of effort in,” she said. “Now that we’re a B Corp [business], we’re also interested in further working with organizations with shared values, inside and out of the B Corp network, to further grow and demonstrate that doing good can also be good for business.”
A major but rewarding challenge continues to be elevating The Social Hub's product while remaining central to the shared guest and management desire for authenticity and responsible business, she said.
Another aspect of that authenticity is the company’s Talent Foundation, a nonprofit initiative announced in May and launched in September that champions “changemakers who have overcome significant educational barriers and possess the drive and potential to develop themselves and change the world,” Koopman said.
“Our investors understood the value of putting into place a foundation as a core part of our social impact strategy,” she said.
The Social Hub donates 1% of its revenue into the program, and more than 30 young individuals from challenged backgrounds have been awarded scholarships.