Matthijs Stekelenburg
Matthijs graduated from our Hospitality Business School in 2007. Matthijs experienced the importance of hospitality already when he was young, as he was raised in the four star hotel of his parents.
When he was supervisor at the Amsterdam Marriott Hotel, he co-founded Hotelkamerveiling.nl, combining e-commerce and hospitality. In 2008, when a recession started, hotels needed higher occupancy and the momentum was there to increase RevPAR by creating a new target audience for hotels through auctioning empty rooms. +5 million bookings were realized with +800.000 members.
In 2022 Matthijs started at start-up DeWarmte to fasten the energy transition and transferred it to scale-up. After that he was open to a new (ad)venture to have a large social impact so he became Venture Builder/Co-founder at Achmea’s Innovation Hub in Amsterdam. Moreover, his passion for hospitality and travel caused him to start Beach Houses White Sands Curaçao, where he and his wife are renting out apartments.
Matthijs was asked by the People’s Party for Freedom & Democracy to become active. He started in commissions, became a board member in Utrecht and a committee member in the province of Utrecht. Currently he is elected as municipal councilor in Wassenaar.
Who is your Hicon?
As no other, hospitality is an industry of knowledge, daring and passion. Please tell us who and what should be on the list of most impactful people, products and places in hospitality.