The a&o Management

Oliver Winter is one of the "fathers of the German hostel idea" and is the founder of a&o hostels. His vision of affordable accommodation in a city center with a sociable hostel feeling component has come true. He has established his budget-chain concept with huge success across Germany. With the entry of Stepstone Group and Proprium Capital Partners, a&o paves the way for a Europe-wide market leadership in the individual and youth travel segment. At the same time, Oliver continues to look after the representation and strength of his brand and the well-being of the employees who lead a&o to success.

Dr Markus Harder is a finance and technology expert and works closely with founder and CEO Oliver Winter. His aim is to help drive the company’s next phase of growth and digitalisation. The digital agenda focuses, amongst other things, on the integration of cloud computing, AI and mobile solutions to further optimise processes and continuously improve the quality of the guest experience. He is also responsible for finance, legal affairs, organisation, business systems and business processes, as well as risk management and procurement. Dr Markus Harder’s previous roles include CFO and management board member at DeepL, CFO at Contentful (now part of Salesforce) and Chief Financial Officer at SoundCloud. He began his career as an investment banker in Morgan Stanley's real estate group.

Torsten Loos has been part of the hostel chain since its inception and has accompanied a&o through every opening. He came to Berlin as an architecture student and started working as a student assistant in one of the Berlin hostels. After finishing his studies, he decided to stay at a&o and went through different positions. He develops quality standards and thus ensures error-free and uniform processes in operations. To deepen his knowledge, he completed a second degree in economics. As Chief Operating Officer, he implemented, among other things, a regional manager structure and developed a roster software with automatic assignment, which is used in the houses and thus creates more digitalization. New tools such as inventory systems, e-learning and cost control were developed under him and the internal communication platform EWIDA was further optimized.

A classic a&o success story is reflected in Phillip Winter's career: From the student assistant at the reception via the Financial Controller to the Chief Marketing Officer, he has learned the a&o product range from scratch. He understands the needs of the guests perfectly and combines them with the demands of the hotel. His passion for strategic concepts with analytical flair, which are transformed into commercial and sales hits, the enthusiastic marathon runner and family man lives up to the a&o group completely. He is convinced by creative out-of-the-box ideas with a measurable added value for the guest. In 2017, Phillip Winter successfully restructured the service centre and has since greatly increased performance. Through projects such as the a&o app with mobile key, the digital registration form, web check-in or kiosk check-in and the communication bot, Phillip Winter is driving the digitalization of a&o. One of his most important projects was the complete rebranding of the a&o group in 2017/2018. Since 2019, the CMO has been responsible for the Europe-wide PR network.

Marin Knez is a seasoned revenue management professional with over 12 years of experience specializing in hospitality revenue optimization. Known for his analytical mindset and ability to adapt to industry trends, Marin has consistently delivered results across competitive markets throughout his career. Before joining a&o in 2022, Marin worked for just over 4 years at berner+becker revenue management, a company specializing in fully outsourced revenue management and consulting as Head of Client Results and prior to that in key revenue management roles across different hotel chains. Marin holds a Master of International Hospitality Management from the American Hotel & Lodging Association.

Julien Mattei is a strategic expert with a keen eye for detail, who brings an extensive network and 15 years of experience, having been investment director at Dutch firm The Social Hub and also at Norges Bank Investment Management. In his position as a Chief Investment Officer, he is focusing on expanding the presence of a&o Hostels across Europe alongside Oliver Winter, StepStone Group and Proprium Capital Partners.