Craft House at IHIF Berlin 2020
Join the Club: The Power of Community
Craft House Principals, Jonas Ogren &Yvette Jong, will conduct a special interview at IHIF’s pop up event on adjacent spaces.
Craft House Principals Yvette Jong and Jonas Ogren were invited to conduct a special interview at IHIF's pop-up event on adjacent spaces — a recognition that the private club conversation had moved firmly into the mainstream of hospitality investment thinking.
The modern membership club market is booming. But the more interesting question is why — and what separates the clubs that endure from the ones that plateau.
The topics we planned to explore go to the heart of what makes a great club:
What is driving the resurgence of private clubs? The appetite for belonging has never been stronger. But the definition of belonging has changed entirely. The next generation of members isn't joining a club for its history or its reputation. They're joining for what it makes possible — the connections, the experiences, the sense of being part of something that shares their values.
Relaxed exclusivity — what does it actually mean? The most successful clubs today have moved away from exclusivity as gatekeeping and toward exclusivity as curation. The velvet rope has been replaced by a point of view. Members don't want to feel special because others are kept out. They want to feel special because the people inside are genuinely interesting.
Sustainability as a club value — not just a marketing claim. The clubs that will define the next decade are the ones where sustainability isn't a line on the website. It's a founding principle that runs through every decision — from how the building was designed to how the kitchen sources its ingredients to how the club engages with its surrounding community.
The social co-working question. The rise of remote work and the decline of the traditional office has created an enormous opportunity for clubs that can offer something a WeWork never could: a space that is professionally productive and socially alive at the same time. The best clubs are becoming the place where members do their best thinking — not because of the wifi, but because of who else is in the room.
Programming as culture, not calendar. The clubs we most admire aren't the ones with the busiest event schedules. They're the ones where the programming reflects a genuine point of view about how their members want to live — and creates the conditions for the kinds of connections and conversations that members can't find anywhere else.
The convergence of hotel and club. One of the most significant trends we've been watching is the blurring of boundaries between private clubs and hotel brands — clubs adding residential and guest room components, hotels building membership models, wellness and longevity programming moving from spa amenity to core identity. The categories are converging, and the most interesting projects sit deliberately at the intersection.
What kills a great club. The opening is easy. The real test is year two, year five, year ten. The clubs that fail don't usually fail because the concept was wrong. They fail because the energy that powered the opening had no replacement engine — because nobody was asking how to make year five better than year one.
At Craft House, private clubs have been one of our most consistent areas of focus — from concept development and membership strategy to experience design and the ongoing curation that keeps a club alive long after the opening champagne has been drunk. We've worked with clubs across multiple continents, at every stage of development, and what we've learned is that the principles that make a great club are remarkably consistent — even when the context, the culture, and the membership are entirely different.
The conversation about what a private club can be is one we never get tired of having.
Adjacent Spaces @ IHIF
a bold new pop-up event for the hospitality’s innovators and game-changers
Adjacent Spaces will discuss adjacent concepts including; hostels, co-living, co-working, student accommodation, serviced apartments, senior living, and more. This event will explore investing beyond the hotel room and is open to all registered delegates of IHIF.
As the hospitality sector continues to evolve and expand, this highly focussed event will gather alternative hospitality asset brands, investors, brokers, law firms, consultants, designers and architects to meet, talk, exchange ideas, share knowledge and shape the future of the industry.