Biography
Ali V. Kasikci | Founder/CEO
Simply put, Ali Kasikci is an innovative leader with impeccable style. The Independent Hotelier of the World 2004 award winner, Kasikci, is considered to be one of the industry’s foremost pioneers. HOTELS magazine’s editor Jeff Weinstein states, “Ali Kasikci is a 21st-century hotel leader.” The Wall Street Journal referred to Kasikci as “The Gatekeeper” to the posh, and USA Today claimed that “His Hotel Lights Up the Stars.”
Kasikci helms Bentley Management Inc., a Los Angeles-based strategic advisory and asset management firm providing hospitality operating companies and owners of hospitality assets a strategic counsel to explore qualitative and quantitative improvements in people, product, service and profit. Bentley Management specializes in providing organizations managerial guidance to create a customer by crafting, executing and sustaining their strategic direction to achieve desired results in revenue generation, market share, customer retention and overall profitability.
With clients ranging from luxury hotels, boutique resorts, world-class cruise products, prestigious private clubs and pedigree properties, Kasikci’s premise that “the client should know his/her own business best” forms the basis of his strategic advice and his ability to craft a strategy with his clients and instill a system that facilitates strategic thinking that can be successfully implemented to achieve choreographed results in a hyper-competitive world.
Over Kasikci’s lauded hospitality career, he most recently served as Regional Managing Director, North America, Mexico, Caribbean and Brazil at Belmond Hotels overseeing management and strategic direction of eight luxury properties within the portfolio. A key development during his tenure included the careful restoration of the portfolio’s famed Santa Barbara enclave, Belmond El Encanto, which received the coveted Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star rating an impressive nine months after opening. In addition, Belmond Maroma Resort & Spa also received a Five-Star rating under Kasikci’s directive and together with Belmond El Encanto they served as the only two properties in the Belmond portfolio to achieve this accolade.
Kasikci acted as Vice-President of Strategic Planning & Development for Montage Hotels & Resorts from 2007 to 2010, a position that followed the successful launch of Montage Beverly Hills, which achieved five-star status in record-breaking time and became the only new hotel in California to receive the 2010 Forbes Five Star Award.
From 1991 until September 2007, Kasikci oversaw The Peninsula Beverly Hills and under his management the Hotel achieved some of the highest consistent ratings in the industry- from the highest RevPar in the competitive set, the most profitable property in The Peninsula Group, the highest return guest ratio in the market, in addition to numerous credible service and facility accolades including the prestigious Forbes (Mobil) Five Star and the AAA Five Diamond awards for fourteen consecutive years.
A graduate of the Hotel and Catering College in Tegernsee, Germany, Ali Kasikci holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Claremont Graduate University Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management School in Claremont, California. Following his apprenticeship at Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich, Germany, he held several senior management positions with leading hotels in Germany and with casino resorts in South Africa. He was brought to America by Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts in 1987 where he managed the newly opened Four Seasons Newport Beach, prior to moving to Beverly Hills and joining The Peninsula Group in 1992.