Brera celebrates its 10th birthday

When Matteo Ghedini opened his first Brera Serviced Apartments in Nuremberg in 2013, the TVs, plates and Wi-Fi cable were still being dragged out of the basement. In the meantime, he and his team of almost 40 employees can look back on eight buildings - without "basement service".

For many years, the Italian Matteo Ghedini, who lives in Milan's Brera district, was himself a business traveller with weeks-long stays abroad. Around 2012, a commission brought him to Nuremberg, where he was to reposition a house. It wasn't suitable for flats and offices, so without further ado he turned it into something for people like him - for those who are constantly on the move for work and long for more than just an anonymous hotel during business trips.

For many years, the Italian Matteo Ghedini, who lives in Milan's Brera district, was himself a business traveller with weeks-long stays abroad. Around 2012, a commission brought him to Nuremberg, where he was to reposition a house. It wasn't suitable for flats and offices, so without further ado he turned it into something for people like him - for those who are constantly on the move for work and long for more than just an anonymous hotel during business trips.

But Lilly loved it ....

"I was my own boss, Matteo let me do it with his irrepressible elemental confidence. Nothing was too much for me. It was just fun," she says today. And the guests soon loved it too. Large sporting goods companies etc. booked their Brazilian trainees into the Haus am Plärrer, project workers soon travelled from all over Germany. Brera became an insider's tip, and word-of-mouth recommendations almost automatically filled the serviced flats with long-term bookings. Brera had invented the serviced flat principle for itself without knowing that there was already a small market - typical of the second generation on the market in Germany, which is now firmly established in the segment.

More and more quantum leaps

To this day, Maria Gleissner is House Manager at Brera Serviced Apartments Nuremberg. In the early years, adding service modules quickly became a thing of the past. She saw Brera open its second house in Munich and the third in Frankfurt in 2015. The professionalism of the start-up grew with each additional employee, who in the meantime also increasingly came from the hotel industry. "When I came from Fairmont/Swissôtel, all I had to do was unpack the hotel-known toolbox with the connection to booking systems and with hotel-typical pricing strategies, and together we made quantum leaps every time," remembers Christiane Anstötz, who has been responsible for sales and marketing at Brera Serviced Apartments since 2017.

Matteo Ghedini's real estate thinking has developed into a mature operating model with professional sales systems and effective operational processes, bundled in the head office in Munich. Brera now has almost 40 employees and eight properties from Munich to Stuttgart to Leipzig, and in November another will be launched in Singen on Lake Constance. With an average length of stay of 34 days, the product is at home in the long-stay sector.

Celebrating in Brera

In the last few weeks, all the houses celebrated their tenth birthday with their guests at the same time, in regular video circuits, with cake and the "Brevativo". "We have experienced an incredible journey, from banks that didn't want to understand our concept at the time and complicated approval processes, to landlords that approach us today," Matteo Ghedini sums up. In June, all Brera team members celebrated together in Milan - in Brera. Where else?

And a first house in Italy? Matteo Ghedini would like to, but knows about a completely different market than in Germany. But in the end, longer business trips are made everywhere.
All Brera serviced flat houses have also been bookable with Apartmentservice for years. By the way, anyone who opens their flat in any city is always greeted here with the spaghetti pack as a welcome gift.