Want to own, or develop, a hotel? Who to turn to? Ronit’s the answer, Ronit Copeland, that is. Girlahead was rushed off her little feet in Tel Aviv. We’re off to Pronto, prontissimo, gushed Ronit, swooping her car down into an underground car park put up, or down, by the owner of HOTEL LUTETIA (Paris, plus London’s CAFÉ ROYAL HOTEL, Amsterdam’s CONSERVATORIUM and MAMILLA in Jerusalem – and goodness knows what else). Pronto’s where, it appears, every top businessman over 25 networks at lunch. That excludes t-shirt wearing gen-Z tech-startups. These people are into real things rather than going the Sam Bankman-Fried route.
So Ronit hears your story. You want a hotel? Luxury? For what age group? What’s your vision? She hears it all. Despite having so much to say herself she’s also a listener, a two-fer at all times. She takes your vision and weaves a story, focussing on the idea and making it real. Amazingly, the reality need not be too long a journey. If she finds you an existing hotel, or an office block or something similar to convert, it can be done in 18 months at most. By that time the location and building were secured, and re-designed and filled with whatever, and she’s achieved all the permits, those endless permits.
She’s not only two-fering but multi-skilling. She’s setting up a real-time radio service that will be operating from a glass bubble at Tal Corden’s LILIENBLUM HOTEL, opening on Lilienblum Street in Tel Aviv mid-2023 – it’s named for East European scholar Moshe Leib Lilienblum, 1843-1910. The radio station’s masterminded by a Canadian celebrity, Tsahi Mor in Toronto. Don’t ask. Ronit Copeland is all over the place. She has offices in Budapest and Toronto as well as here, in Tel Aviv, and most of her advisory is outside Israel.
Ronit is into food, taking kosher to Dubai. With food you must understand the surroundings, she says. Open the windows and look outside. Where is the oxygen going to come from? How will the restaurant, be it in an hotel or not, serve the community? What kind of locals do you want to see interacting with your guests? She’s working on wellness, with a little injection of high-tech (put a spa, ideally Guerlain, into your story to add a minimum 10% to return on investment).
Today, however, she’s into conferencing, at DAVID INTERCONTINENTAL TEL AVIV. It is probably fair to say that Questex’s current Israel Hotel Investment event, with such speakers as Minister of Tourism Israel Yoel Razvozos, would not have had all its speakers lined up and confirmed without her help. She’s a story-teller in her own right.
And now listen to this week’s PODCAST:
