Making a living out of creativity

Dubai/Marrakech: Bernd Kolb, a former German Entrepreneur of the Year and Chief Innovation Executive at Deutsche Telekom, one of Europe's biggest telecom providers, has a story to tell about his love for Arabian culture and entrepreneurship. He left his top job and headed to Marrakech where he opened his hotel AnaYela last year.

It was a "spontaneous idea", says Kolb, 47, to step off the top executive's hamster wheel in Germany and dive deep into Arabian culture - a total turning point of his personal life, but a continuation of his business spirit in different direction.

Kolb, despite his young age, is looking back on an extraordinarily successful career as an entrepreneur in the thriving years of the New Economy. He made money with his innovative technology company I-D Media that went public on the German stock exchange in 1999, and then was appointed Chief Innovation Executive at Deutsche Telekom in 2005. He collected a series of awards for his business excellence, among them "German Entrepreneur of the Year" in 1999, the golden "Clio" award of the American Marketing Association and the "Best innovation award" at the New York Festivals.

But, in 2007, he left his top job at the telecom giant to take up new challenges. "All my life I've been an entrepreneur and occupied myself with innovation", says Kolb. When he travelled to Marrakech, Morocco, for the first time three years ago, he was so much impressed by the place that he hit upon the idea of creating a place for himself to begin thinking creatively to evolve innovations. For him this was going to be an escape from the addictive growth pressure that, in his opinion, sooner or later would lead to economic and personal stalemate.

He was looking for a "place of inspiration", and he found it in Marrakech's old city, the Medina district. "It's the ideal place," says Kolb. "Marrakech is hospitable, tolerant, cosmopolitan, and has a genuine, authentic culture - a place to meditate over progress and modernity, over what people may need and what not."

He developed an innovative hotel concept, discovered a 300-year-old city palace in the heart of the Medina, and transformed it into "a place for creative people of this world". The restoration of the building took several months and was entirely funded out of his own pocket. It was carried out by using local artisans to ensure preservation of traditional Moroccan craftsmanship with all the work done by hand without the use of electric tools.

He is convinced that the concept of creating an inspirational environment is the answer to the ever-growing complexity of globalisation and overstimulation through media and markets. "Three years ago I already felt that the turbo capitalism we are exposed to will end in deadlock. I always have been surrounded by the top managers of the world's biggest enterprises and witnessed how the continuously increasing growth pressure resulted in more and more short-dated thinking and acting". The subsequent credit crunch and the global financial crisis seem to prove him right.

The AnaYela opened in 2008 and immediately won the World Hotel Award in the "Soul Experience" category. "This shows that our project is of certain relevance in times of commercial and identity crises," says Kolb. He is now planning to open a second, far bigger house in Marrakech, "a new interpretation of a mystical, oriental palace", to use it for events and conferences. His "Marrakech Academy" is an entrepreneurial forum for business students and a communication platform between the European and Arabian business world.

This doesn't mean everything was easy at the beginning. At first, says Kolb, neighbours and workers in Marrakech were sceptical about the German's demeanour and his ambition to revive the decayed city palace. But persistence paid off.

Today, Medina residents are proud of "their" AnaYela. Recently, Kolb has also launched a new city planning initiative together with the governor of Marrakech.

The AnaYela hotel turned out to be profitable from the first year on.

Bernd Kolb says his hotel and all other projects are "of course" geared to profitability. The AnaYela was profitable from the first year on, he adds, with a remarkably high occupation rate based on an average price of $430 (Dh1,578) per room for a day and night.

He doesn't reveal the amount of investment for the project, but says he is earning extra money from his business workshops and discussion forums he is organising in Marrakech.

"I am totally independent and have financed all projects by myself so far," says Kolb. This enabled him to get his own ideas into shape "without interference from investors".

However, for the regional expansion of the AnaYela hotel brand and the final aim of launching a series of Arab style boutique hotels in other parts of the world, he is looking for financial partners who are entrepreneurship-minded persons like himself.