Home / Work / Kerten Hospitality Corporate Communications
CORPORATE COMMS  ·  KERTEN HOSPITALITY  ·  2023

From near-invisible to Forbes Top 100, in a single cycle.

Forty-five articles in two weeks. 117M people reached. USD 392K PR value. CEO named to Forbes Top 100 Travel & Tourism Leaders and confirmed as a speaker at the Forbes Women's Summit.

i.The Moment

Kerten Hospitality is a boutique lifestyle hospitality group with an ambitious multi-market footprint. Strong positioning in international hospitality trade press, but almost no regional visibility — particularly in Arabic media. For a group with GCC expansion plans, that absence was commercially costly.

The brief was to build regional corporate reputation in both English and Arabic, establish CEO Marloes Knippenberg as a recognised industry voice in the GCC, and do it fast. Development announcements were pending. The narrative architecture needed to be in place before the news broke.

A 360° communications strategy, executed in three components.

First, a positioning workshop to establish unified messaging across CEO, COO and group spokespeople. Second, media training to ensure spokespeople delivered the positioning consistently. Third, a coordinated media rollout across Arabic and English press using the developed messaging architecture — a sequenced editorial engagement across tier-one titles, not a press release blast. We targeted UAE and KSA as priority markets and built CEO visibility through bylined thought leadership, speaking platforms and selective interview access.

iii.The Outcome

In two weeks, from near-zero regional coverage, Kerten Hospitality achieved 45 articles, reaching 117,815,775 people, with a total PR value of USD 392,145.

The UAE was the most active market (47% share of coverage). Saudi Arabia followed with 16 articles (36% share). 58% of coverage was published in English, 42% in Arabic — demonstrating genuine bilingual capability, not English-only with Arabic translations.

CEO Marloes Knippenberg was listed on Forbes' Top 100 Travel & Tourism Leaders 2023 and confirmed as a speaker at the Forbes Women's Summit in Riyadh.

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