The program is named after the founding year
Kempinski was founded in 1897 in Berlin by Berthold Kempinski, and it did not start as a hotel company at all. It began as a wine merchant and restaurant business, and became a hotel group only in 1952, when Berthold's grandson converted the Kurfürstendamm 27 restaurant into the city's first new luxury hotel after the war.
The company is privately owned, with dual headquarters in Geneva and Munich. A Bahraini shareholder acquired the majority stake from Thailand's Crown Property Bureau in February 2017, with the Thai side retaining a minority holding. The portfolio runs to around 75 hotels and residences, concentrated in Europe, the Middle East, China and Africa, and leisure resorts are only about a quarter of it.
DISCOVERY Dollars, not points
Kempinski's guest program is DISCOVERY, and it does not work like a points scheme. Members earn DISCOVERY Dollars, a cash-back style currency spendable against eligible charges, across four tiers: Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium.
It is also a branded front end to the Global Hotel Alliance, so recognition and earning extend across more than a thousand hotels from 55 brands. Whether a Club 1897 rate earns DISCOVERY Dollars is not published, so we confirm it for your property rather than assuming it works the way another brand's program does.
A group that employs its own historian
Kempinski runs an in-house heritage function with a resident historian who researches each property's background before it is developed, on the principle that a hotel should be designed from what the building and the city already are.
In 2026 the group bought the Augustine Hotel in Prague, set in the Augustinian Monastery of St Thomas below Prague Castle. It was Kempinski's first hotel acquisition in more than fifty years: the previous one was the Vier Jahreszeiten in Munich, in 1970.
What we do
You pay Kempinski's own rate, with the commission coming from the hotel's side. The reservation is flagged before arrival with your arrival time, the occasion if there is one, and anything worth knowing about the room.
Because the portfolio is weighted toward city hotels rather than resorts, the benefit that tends to matter most here is the early arrival rather than the credit. Tell us your flight and we will work it. Start an enquiry or send a booking you already hold.