Mothers always welcome us with coffee and dessert, a table set for a scrumptious meal and various home-made delicacies...
Outside of family homes, this kind of warm and welcoming ambiance is present in the French hotel chain Mama Shelter, one of whose hotels officially opened for guests in Belgrade on March 8.
Mama Shelter Belgrade is located in the city's center, on the topmost (fourth) floor of the Rajiceva Shopping Center in the Kneza Mihaila Street and has 125 rooms.
Family home-like experience – this is what sets apart Mama Shelter hotels. The brand's philosophy is to take care of its guests as if they were visiting mother's home, providing top quality service and avoiding cliches.
Each Mama Shelter hotel is characteristic of the city is located in. The Belgrade hotel, for example, offers stuffed cabbage leaves and other traditional Serbian dishes.
The concept made quite a boom in the tourism market in 2008, when the first hotel opened in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. Mama Shelter is now present in Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro. The brand was founded by the Trigano family – father Serge and sons Benjamin and Jeremie, who visited the Serbian capital on the occasion of the hotel's opening, and not for the first time either.
Our portal had the opportunity to talk with Jeremie Trigano about the new hotel in Serbia, the secret of the success of the Mama Shelter Brand and their further plans.
Belgrade as new BerlinCasually dressed in jeans and sneakers, Jeremie Trigano leaves an impression of a relaxed person, as befits the brand itself. He says for eKapija that what attracts him to Belgrade is the openness, the nightlife and the great potential. He liked the city and its people at first sight, so there was no doubt that a Mama Shelter hotel would be established there.
– Our idea is to go to new cities, such as Belgrade, which is a “new Berlin” for us. You are close enough to Paris and Istanbul, the location is great, which is especially attractive to us. Belgrade is a developing city with a lot of potential, and we are an urban hotel brand and we expand to places with their own history which have a lot to offer. We want to attract people from other countries, but also to welcome local guests – Trigano points out.
He explains that, before they opened the hotel, they visited various places in Belgrade, watching what people ate and drank and which clubs they visited. Based on this, they concluded that Serbs like coffee, cocktails, kebabs...
– We take this into consideration, because we want to provide home-like ambiance to guests arriving to Belgrade and make them feel at home. We want to give good suggestions to our guests when it comes to local restaurants, antique shops and other places the citizens of Belgrade shop at, which is why we've also designed a city guide at Mama Shelter, where foreigners will be able to discover hidden places in Belgrade.