In a world where everything is on display, the last true luxury is access.
The E.R.A.s — Experience Real Access — are how Kempinski gives it: the many souls of a city opened to you, lived from the inside.
A Kempinski is no longer only a place to stay. It hands you the keys to the city: its people, its places, its moments. Where it once pointed you toward a destination, it now becomes your way through it — to the doors and people you'd reach only if you knew someone who knew someone.
We spend years building the relationships, the access and the trust that make these moments possible. Now, step into your ERA.
Your ERA is a reflection of the person you are at this particular moment in your life.
And each ERA is anchored to its place. The Royalty ERA in Munich is not the Royalty ERA in Bali. Real access means access to the real destination: the people, the stories, the rituals that belong to that city and nowhere else.
An ERA is not a temporary escape. It is a chapter — a defining moment of The Good Life that stays with you long after you leave.
A city cannot simply be visited. It has to be lived — through its people, its addresses, its rituals. We have been living in ours for generations.
In an over-exposed world, the rarest luxury is entry. Kempinski's heritage opens doors that cannot be booked — only earned.
The Resident Curator is a new role with a century of history behind it.
In 1926, a showman named Leo Kronau walked into Kempinski with an idea: a house of worlds, where a guest could step out of their own life and into another. Kempinski built it — and made Kronau its Artistic Director, the first Experience Designer the world had ever seen.
A century on, the Resident Curator is that job.
What they do is not a list of recommendations, but an E.R.A.
They spend years building the relationships, the trust and the access that turn a trip into the beautiful stay you’ll measure every other one against. They know which doors open. They know who holds the keys.
And they can tell you, with some certainty, which ERA you are in.
Every city has its inner circle: the sculptor firing her kiln in a courtyard no map has found, the sommelier sourcing from vineyards his regulars have never heard of, the retired footballer who knows every neighbourhood like a second language.
The Local Insiders are these souls. Artists, athletes, craftspeople and connoisseurs who do not perform the destination, who live it. Through Kempinski, they share it.
Each encounter is singular. Each one arranged with intention.
Because the rarest thing we can offer a well-travelled guest is not luxury they have not seen — it is a city they thought they already knew.
An ERA is not assembled when you book it. It was built years earlier: in the workshop visits, the long lunches, the time spent with the people who hold each city's keys.
By the time you arrive, the introductions are already old friendships — and you simply need to get introduced.
The Resident Curator is a new role with a century of history behind it.
In 1926, a showman named Leo Kronau walked into Kempinski with an idea: a house of worlds, where a guest could step out of their own life and into another. Kempinski built it — and made Kronau its Artistic Director, the first Experience Designer the world had ever seen.
A century on, the Resident Curator is that job.
What they do is not a list of recommendations, but an E.R.A.
They spend years building the relationships, the trust and the access that turn a trip into the beautiful stay you’ll measure every other one against. They know which doors open. They know who holds the keys.
And they can tell you, with some certainty, which ERA you are in.
Every city has its inner circle: the sculptor firing her kiln in a courtyard no map has found, the sommelier sourcing from vineyards his regulars have never heard of, the retired footballer who knows every neighbourhood like a second language.
The Local Insiders are these souls. Artists, athletes, craftspeople and connoisseurs who do not perform the destination, who live it. Through Kempinski, they share it.
Each encounter is singular. Each one arranged with intention.
Because the rarest thing we can offer a well-travelled guest is not luxury they have not seen — it is a city they thought they already knew.
An ERA is not assembled when you book it. It was built years earlier: in the workshop visits, the long lunches, the time spent with the people who hold each city's keys.
By the time you arrive, the introductions are already old friendships — and you simply need to get introduced.
KEMPINSKI, SINCE 1872
Berthold Kempinski understood something that most people in 19th-century Berlin did not: that pleasure, properly considered, is a serious pursuit.
At a time when wine was sold only by the bottle, he offered it by the glass. He paired it. He made the table a place where the ordinary could become extraordinary: where a single evening could change the way you thought about food, about company, about what you deserved from life.
He called it The Good Life. Not excess. Not performance.
Something quieter and more personal: the conviction that life, at its best, is worth tasting slowly.
And when the next generation asked how far the idea could go, the answer stood on Potsdamer Platz. Haus Vaterland, opened by Kempinski in 1928: a dome holding entire worlds, each room a door into another life. Within its first year, a million guests had walked through its doors.
The E.R.A.s begin there. From that house of worlds to the 75 addresses we now hold in some of the most extraordinary places on earth, everything Kempinski does begins with the same question Berthold asked at that first table in Berlin: What does The Good Life mean to you?
EXCLUSIVITY
Year-round
Survey five royal estates from the sky, side by side with the couple who knows every secret of the late kings and their castles.
EXCLUSIVITY
Step behind centuries of craftmanship and paint your own legacy in white gold.
EXCLUSIVITY
Year-round
Soar above Bavaria's royal crown jewel and take part in the story of Neuschwanstein, where fairytales were first imagined.
or to enjoy up to 10% off your next stay.