Mourine Oloo, Director of Brand and Marketing, Kwetu Nairobi, Curio Collection by Hilton

Kwetu Nairobi takes its concept from Curio Collection by Hilton, a select group of hotels built around giving curious travelers real experiences. Wherever a Curio Collection hotel is located, guests get to interact with the local culture, the people, the history, and the cuisine. We wanted a brand that resonated with that, and Curio was a great fit.

Kwetu Nairobi sits right next to Karura Forest, the second-largest urban forest in the world, so our guests can enjoy walks in the forest, horse riding, tracks, or hiking. Our biggest strength, though, is our team. We’re genuinely proud of the people who work at this hotel; they live the brand, and that’s a big part of what sets us apart. Kwetu Nairobi is within Nairobi city but feels away from it. Once you’re inside the hotel, it feels like a resort, yet you’re only a few minutes from Westlands, Nairobi’s entertainment hub, so guests can go enjoy the nightlife and come back to a serene, quiet environment. There’s really no other property in a comparable location.

Since pre-opening, when we were setting our positioning strategy, we thought of the property mainly for corporate travelers: people who’d work during the day and enjoy the facility afterward. But we’ve seen a real shift. We’re attracting a huge number of leisure guests, many heading to the Maasai Mara, who initially thought of Kwetu as a one-night stopover and then realized there was so much more to the hotel that they wanted to stay longer.

In over 15 years in the hotel industry, I think I’ve seen the longest extended stays of my career here at Kwetu, guests who arrive planning two days and end up staying much longer to enjoy the property. That’s genuinely surprised me.

A lot has changed. Guests are now very focused on sustainability: what is the hotel actually doing for the environment? We’ve built a lot around that. We use smart lighting and sensors, so if a guest leaves the room, the AC adjusts to a set temperature of 23 degrees Celsius and the lights turn off when there’s no movement. We’ve worked to reduce plastic significantly, and we measure our waste; if it looks too high, we discuss it as a team.

Our partnership with Karura Forest is part of that sustainability commitment. When guests visit the forest, it’s complimentary to them, but the hotel pays for it, because we want the forest preserved and cared for. Today’s guest isn’t only looking for a good room and breakfast; they want personalized service alongside genuine environmental responsibility. Small things matter too: our pool is heated only on request, to conserve energy, and we work with a company that recycles our used oil. Our waste is collected by a company called Takataka, and before we partnered with them, we visited their facility to see exactly how they recycle and what they do with the waste. They now certify us on how well we perform in reducing it.

Kwetu Nairobi is actually my second pre-opening; I did my first at a hotel called The Social House Nairobi. Moving from traditionally corporate hotels into a lifestyle hotel taught me that simply having a presence in the city isn’t enough. You have to build a real brand and make sure the whole team understands it and lives it.

So I made a deliberate choice to invest heavily in our online presence and in the team itself. I’m part of onboarding for every new hire, and I personally walk them through the brand and why we make the decisions we make. We refresh that training monthly, so the team lives the brand rather than needing constant reminders; it shows in how naturally they communicate it. We’ve even carried the brand into our back-of-house spaces. And whatever communication faces the guest, we curate a version of it for staff too, so the team experiences the same brand language the guest does. One of our pillars, for example, is ‘serenely energetic,’ which reflects our location, and we make sure that idea comes through for guests and team members alike.

We also go out of our way to review guest feedback in real detail, as a team, looking at what went wrong and what needs to change. I hadn’t done that as deliberately in previous roles, but here it’s worked, and it’s actually reduced how much we need to spend on marketing.

How we made them feel. That’s the most important thing to me as the person who heads the brand. Every guest who leaves our hotel, I want them to feel genuinely well taken care of, and I want the people they met here to be memorable to their experience. Buildings will always be there, brick and mortar is everywhere, but how someone makes you feel is personal.