Charles Forte on Carving His Own Path in the Family Hotel Business

There’s a tradition in the Forte family of starting on the lowest rungs of the hospitality ladder and working their way up.

In 1911, Rocco Forte emigrated from Italy to Scotland to open a cafe that would mark the first hospitality establishment in the namesake family business. He would go on to open several more restaurants in the U.K., which his son would continue to grow.

Although the hotel group has ebbed and flowed through the decades, it finds itself in a new era with all three adult members of the current generation working for the company.

Charles Forte, 32, is one of those three and followed in the steps of his grandfather by starting in hospitality service. At age 15, he was a waiter at London’s Brown’s Hotel—owned by Rocco Forte Hotels since 2003—and has worked in almost every area of the hotel and restaurant industry since.

Today, he is the group’s director of development, responsible for steering external partnerships and capital investments.

“My role is to find new opportunities and develop ourselves on a much smaller scale,” he says.

In January, Saudi Arabia’s PIF sovereign wealth fund took a 49% investment stake in Rocco Forte Hotels—a deal Charles helped complete. He says that the investment will help guide the group’s next growth phase, which includes a target of three hotels per year and expansion in the Middle East, among other regions. Through 2027, the group is opening four new properties in Italy and working on a project in Marrakesh, Morocco.

The family’s roots are Italian and that’s where many of the group’s most notable properties reside, although according to Charles, more than 40% of the company’s business is within the U.S.

Alongside his two sisters Lydia and Irene, Charles is connecting the Forte name to a new generation of luxury travellers through partnership deals with brands like the Macallan and smaller, longer-term property builds in Italy and elsewhere.

Penta caught up with Forte by phone from his office in London.

PENTA: Do you think working in a family business brings more challenges or opportunities?

Charles Forte: Being in a family business like this affords opportunities you wouldn’t have otherwise. My sisters and I worked in all the different departments of the hotels, and I realistically always wanted to join the business. At other times, I did want to be a filmmaker, but I wanted to be a part of the family legacy. My dad is a good mentor and I’ve never really looked back.

How do you differentiate yourself in an extremely competitive luxury hotel market?

It’s very challenging to differentiate ourselves. Sometimes I struggle to differentiate between us and other luxury brands because a lot of the products are very similar. There’s an international luxury aesthetic that’s very copy and paste, and a lot of the bigger guys are trying to create new brands within their own stable of brands. Our hotels are very design-oriented and not so traditional, for example.

What differentiates us is the family aspect. There’s a real family behind this, and it creates value in our brand. We have this “quiet luxury” aesthetic.

MORE: U.S. Renews Program to Root out Money Laundering in Real Estate Ahead of Larger Crackdown

What is your philosophy on hotel partnerships? Do you find yourself chasing partnerships with big-name brands to stay on par with your competitors?

Partnerships have value if they have relevance and the partner is relevant to the destination. We don’t chase partnerships because if we did, it would mean that something is missing from the hotel. These partnerships should be organic. I’m excited because we recently brought in a new director of marketing who worked at Six Senses, and that will help us do more meaningful and special collaborations and partnerships.

Do you think that’s creating more appeal for Rocco Forte Hotels among the younger generation of luxury travellers?

There’s a broad range of pace in this space, considering how competitive the operator landscape has become. We’re finding that younger travellers aren’t geared towards any specific trend. I think we’re slightly more classic in appeal. We’re not ostentatious. There’s no substitute for beautiful design and great service—we’re not looking to reinvent the world. Depending on which hotel they visit, some people know us as a brand, others as a specific independent hotel, and we’d like consumers to know which brand is behind the property.

In August, we opened Rocco Forte House Milan, which features more longer-stay keys, where stays can be two weeks, a month or a year. We’re finding that’s something more travellers want and we can build a nice client base for those who want longer stays.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

The recent budget has forced a reckoning for property investors.

Negative gearing now restricted to new residential builds, the CGT discount gone and on paper, the numbers look different.

And many investors are responding by pivoting toward yield, prioritising cash flow over capital growth in a way that property strategists say misses the point entirely.

“The debate has shifted to yield versus growth as if they are opposing forces,” says Abdullah Nouh, founder of Melbourne-based buyers’ agency Mecca Property Group. “But that framing is itself the mistake.”

Nouh, who works with high-net-worth families and investors on long-term acquisition strategy, argues that capital growth remains the primary driver of genuine wealth creation and that the post-budget environment has made quality assets more important, not less.

The numbers make his case plainly. An additional $500 per week in rental income is welcome. A prestige asset appreciating by $1 million over a market cycle is transformative.

These are not equivalent outcomes, and portfolios built around yield at the expense of location and land value tend to generate income while wealth stands largely still.

The more nuanced shift Nouh is seeing among sophisticated investors is a move toward assets where both outcomes can be engineered simultaneously – established homes on substantial land in quality locations, where the existing dwelling can be repositioned, rental returns improved, and the underlying land value compounds independent of what sits on it.

For investors with existing equity, commercial property is also entering the conversation in a more serious way.

Prestige industrial assets, medical centres and long-leased essential retail offer income profiles that residential property in most capital city markets cannot currently match: longer lease terms, tenants covering outgoings, and greater predictability than the residential tenancy cycle.

“The investors who build lasting wealth are rarely the ones who chased yield or growth exclusively,” says Nouh.

“They are the ones who built a strategy they could sustain – one that generated enough income to hold quality assets through multiple cycles while those assets compounded in value.”

The budget has changed the settings. It has not changed the fundamentals.

Charles Forte on Carving His Own Path in the Family Hotel Business

The federal budget has rattled property investors. But the biggest mistake isn’t the tax changes, it’s the conclusion many are drawing from them.