Sometimes small lights flash that show that equality is making a bit of progress after all. For the first time in its history, the Hotel Adlon is also getting a woman as manager. It is also remarkable because this house on Pariser Platz has always relied heavily on the great, venerable traditions. Based on the saying “Noblesse oblige”, nobility oblige, it says “Adlon oblige”.
Karina Ansos, the new Managing Director, can even say it without an accent, because she was born in France. The impressive stages of her career show that the savoir vivre, the art of the good life, was sung to her from the cradle. The 50-year-old has studied luxury hotels thoroughly.
It all began 23 years ago when she became responsible for events at the Hamburg Atlantic Hotel – one of the parent companies of the Kempinski Group, which also runs the Adlon. Udo Lindenberg has lived in a suite there since 1995. In the same position she then went to Weimar to the Hotel Elephant, a legend among literature lovers, known, among other things, from Thomas Mann’s “Lotte in Weimar”. The house developed from an inn opened in 1696 to a luxury hotel and has gathered the most famous poets at its tables, including Goethe, Schiller and Herder.
In 2009, Karina Ansos moved to China, to the Kempinski Hotel in the silk city of Suzhou. She then opened the all-suite hotel “The One Executive Suites” in Shanghai, which she managed for three years. Now she is looking forward to “continuing to write the Adlon story with the team”, as she says on the occasion of her appointment.
Things will start for the new hotel director in mid-October. Before that, she has to say goodbye to her employees at the Kempinski Hotel Frankfurt Gravenbruch. Kempinski top manager Timur Sentuerk commented on the change that she had been able to show an excellent track record there over the past seven years thanks to her comprehensive know-how.
He thanked the outgoing Adlon director Michael Sorgenfrey for his “high level of expertise”. He managed to steer the Adlon ship with a sure hand through the difficult pandemic period. The celebrations for the Adlon anniversary would have rounded off his time there in a first-class way. Sorgenfrey officially takes a sabbatical. The good reason for the sabbatical is that he doesn’t want to use it to forge a career, but for a special type of further training: he’s going to be a father and in the hotel industry lets another light flash in the slow-moving history of equal rights.
There was also a change at the head of the Bristol Hotel on Kurfürstendamm: from now on, 54-year-old Frank Ketterer from Düsseldorf will run the business there.
