The Student Hotel: One Community, One Lie
More Than Just a Hotel
The Student Hotel (TSH) was founded by entrepreneur Charlie MacGregor in 2006. TSH currently operates in 15 locations across Europe, most notably in Amsterdam, Paris, Florence, and Berlin. With plans to spread The Student Hotel’s reach over Europe, 10 more hotels are in the process of development and are set to be open by 2025. Amidst the Amsterdam housing crisis, MacGregor felt called to found The Student Hotel. He aimed to alleviate students of their struggles to find housing while creating a space to expand his vision. Although seemingly rooted in altruism, TSH was founded on MacGregor’s savior complex, as exemplified by the following quote from The Student Hotel’s TSH-U website:
“When Charlie MacGregor (CEO) moved to the Netherlands, he’s noticed that no one cared about quality student accommodation. In fact, no one really cared about students at all. But he did.”
The Student Hotel offers an array of products and experiences and claims to be more than just an average hotel due to its foundation in the innovative concept of hybrid hospitality. Going above and beyond, TSH combines both long-stay and short-stay hotel rooms, student accommodation, meeting and event spaces, co-working spaces, and food and drinks. A room for a student costs about €1000 a month for a 12-month stay at The Student Hotel’s Amsterdam City location, with about 300 rooms. TSH has a capacity of a couple hundred regular hotel rooms, each going for around €200 a night. A desk in the co-working spaces averages out to around €400 a month and is rented out by entrepreneurs and companies. Meeting rooms are typically used by organizations and corporations and can cost up to €5000 a day depending on the package - whether they request food and beverage.
The goal of this hybrid hospitality is to prevent an isolated experience for guests by bringing people together who encounter TSH in any aspect of their lives, whether it be living, visiting, working, or grabbing a coffee. TSH hopes to create a community that merges the city and all guests into one big diverse community - the cornerstone of their vision. By creating a community of people from all walks of life, people can connect in the spaces provided by TSH and create an environment that fits the TSH values of openness and consciousness. Through shared core beliefs and an array of services and products offered, TSH attempts to advance a sense of community while avoiding a sense of isolation. While TSH presents itself as an all-inclusive, efficient machine, this machine only operates because of its overworked and underpaid employees.
One Family
The Student Hotel attempts to create a home away from home - one big family. Much like a family, TSH is founded on shared core values and mutual support. TSH works towards their common goals, outlined on their website as TSH values: being open, fun, curious, conscious, unfinished, and entrepreneurial. TSH promotes this idea of mutual support and empathy amongst employees. This is exemplified by their relatively new initiative called One Community. The goal of One Community is that employees of all operations departments of The Student Hotel - including restaurant, reception, coworking spaces, meetings, and events - no longer specialize in a specific department but instead are trained in all departments. This is an attempt to foster an environment of so-called community and mutual support.
One Team
People want to be a part of a community; they crave intimacy and friendship, and TSH provides it to them artificially. According to a former employee, The Student Hotel presents itself as a:
“very open, young, dynamic, inclusive, and tolerant space. And I do agree to a certain point, it’s definitely a young and open - like I can really be who I am. There is a lot of focus on having a fun, light-hearted work atmosphere, but this environment often feels forced and shallow.”
TSH is set up on values that promote the celebration of authenticity and foster connection between employees and guests, while simultaneously creating a more efficient and fluid workplace. But, buried beneath the buzzwords, TSH has an ulterior motive for such initiatives, notably the exploitation of its employees. The use of rhetoric centered around the concept of community deceives the guests, customers, and staff into thinking The Student Hotel is a place of real community, instead of the corporation it is. People will feel inherently drawn to help out their coworkers when they are struggling or work an extra hour for the sake of their superiors, and even feel an obligation and the responsibility to go above and beyond in the name of a company that is only interested in the profit their labor provides.
One Community
The Student Hotel’s new initiative One Community embodies this concept. One Community was handed to employees as:
“The best thing in the world - we got pretty brainwashed I would say. It’s all about connection: making connections with your colleagues, with yourself, and the guests - one experience, one team, one family. It was also presented as something really good for the staff - like we were all getting something out of it. We get to learn new skills and get more qualified by working in all operations departments. It was talked about as something so innovative that it was exciting just to be a part of something this new, unknown, and unique.”
Under the guise of connection and support, One Community acts as a loophole to exploit TSH employees. According to TSH, the goal is to cement relationships amongst operations employees and build friendships to create an environment that mimics that of a loving, caring family. Having had conversations with former employees, there is a sense of family and community in that working environment, but it acts as an exploitative loophole.
“When you are friends first and colleagues second, you’re not going to think twice about helping each other out by staying late or coming in on your day off because someone called in sick.”
The functioning of One Community is based on how willing employees are to support one another. It takes advantage of people’s empathy and compassion and weaponizes it as a tool for profit. By creating an environment of mutual support, employees are encouraged, actively or subconsciously, to help each other, when in reality their help is serving the top 1% that is reaping the majority of their work’s benefit.
One Workforce
Words like “community” and “family” are often thrown around in corporate settings to strengthen the illusion of community within and between workers and customers. Calling a group of people, whose only shared experience is their workplace, a “family” is a form of manipulation. Families and communities are inherently seen as loving and caring structures that are built based on love, respect, and care. Whereas, companies are built on capitalist ideals of maximizing profit through the exploitation of their employees. Despite not being driven by interest, families, and communities are also arranged in a kind of hierarchy, but this hierarchy is one based on mutual support, choice, and loving. Companies can use this hierarchy to their advantage and advance an “environment of family”.
The best way to ensure a company makes a profit is to have a reliable and enthusiastic workforce. More than an economic ideology, capitalism has strayed from physical and methodological efficiency and shifted over to employee motivation and enthusiastic willingness at an individual level. Companies are no longer preoccupied with improving the state of factory assembly lines - physical labor - and can now focus on how to maximize their employees’ mental capacities - emotional labor. If employees feel apathetic toward their employer, they are not dedicating their full selves to their work, therefore not operating at maximum efficiency for maximum profit. Employees’ motivation is essential to the thriving of any company operating in today’s capitalist system. If employees can operate at full physical and mental capacity, whether they are in the presence of their superiors or not, ensures a steady and considerable income. The key to achieving blind support from every employee is to make them believe they are more than willing participants. One way of doing so is by strengthening a sense of community, loyalty, and devotion.
Appropriating language that encourages a sense of family deceives employees and manipulates them into a sense of mutual care, in reality, however, companies have little to no interest in their employees beyond their money-making capabilities. This care is artificial and disingenuous as the company exists to make money. By using language that connotes care and support, companies take advantage of their workers’ perception of a community thereby tricking them into thinking the position they fall into within a corporate hierarchy is a choice. A willing employee is the most efficient kind of employee. Overworked and underpaid, a willing employee with the idea of family hammered into their head is still more likely to stay late to help out a colleague, a guest, or the advancement of an ideology, than a reluctant employee. One Community mobilizes this broken system by claiming to provide a community of mutual care. Rather than creating a space for mutual support, the aforementioned initiative acts as an exploitative loophole and takes advantage of employees’ willingness to help their coworkers, and calls for a sacrifice of their own physical and mental health.
A Broken System
The Student Hotel claims it is built on community values and aims to foster an inclusive atmosphere. Through shared core values and new initiatives, TSH can advance its vision. While their core values emphasize authenticity and diversity, this openness only extends so far. The Student Hotel’s new initiative, One Community, seems so adamant about the connection between employees, guests, and the city, yet does nothing to welcome Amsterdam communities or make its services accessible to all. TSH weaponizes people’s perception of community, their empathy, and their compassion. However, TSH is just one of the many companies making use of this kind of rhetoric. The Student Hotel functions within a deeply exploitative system. Most companies operating in today’s capitalist system use this same method. Capitalism mobilizes this rhetoric and we all end up falling for it. People are tricked into believing they are being cared for by a company that does not correctly compensate them for their work. The Student Hotel, although a perfect example, is just one of the many.