© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
MiNC Apartments’ client base in London is over 90 per cent corporate and a large amount of that is from financial institutions. The vast majority of the company’s apartments are either around the City or the Docklands and they boast the likes of Goldman Sachs, RBS, Barclays and Merrill Lynch as regular tenants.
“We see it as a growing market,” Kamran continues. “We have research reports from Savills confirming this to be the case. There is no single player or brand name out there that people relate to for serviced apartments, although there are a number of organisations currently trying to do this. Some of them are in direct competition with us. Many are trying to run them like a hotel, which makes it very difficult to make it profitable, and many are treating it like a pseudo-residential model where they try run a normal block as serviced apartments and will find themselves worse off after taking into account the numerous overheads,” he continues.
MiNC has also bought properties in the trendy Notting Hill area with a view of converting them into serviced apartments. “We’re finding that Japanese and American corporate clients are opting more and more to stay in the west end instead of the City, so we’re going to try and take advantage of that market,” Kamran continues.
Asked why serviced apartments aren’t necessarily the instantaneous accommodation of choice for business travellers at present, Kamran replied: “It’s obviously an awareness thing. But it’s also an availability thing. At present there aren’t actually that many units available in London. But if you spoke to people in the middle-east and the far-east, they would be a lot more aware because there’s a lot more availability.
“At the moment in the UK, we actually turn away more bookings than we accept. What we tend to find is that at certain times of the year, the big audits begin. If you read the hospitality press everyone has acknowledged that serviced apartments are going to be taking a larger and larger market share.
“Ultimately someone will create a serviced apartments’ brand, and other people will try to follow that. Whether there will be more serviced apartments let than hotel rooms is a different matter and I think a large amount of that will be about supply. In London there is a shortage already.
Finally, there is another development opportunity within the serviced apartment sector that has not escaped Kamran’s attentions. As Beijing hands the Olympic host city mantle to London, with that comes a golden opportunity for growth and redevelopment.
“The Olympics last for only a few weeks, but prior to that you have a number of contractors passing through the area. I would suggest that a lot of the construction firms won’t be staying in hotels so it’s definitely an area of business we’re currently looking into,” concludes Kamran.