The Istanbul-born self-made entrepreneur has gotten back into the tourism business and is working on building a small group of castle and city hotels. “In recent years, I have been intensively concerned with the topic of heritage,” says Kinay. Heritage hotels are accommodations in buildings steeped in history, such as castles. In Austria, numerous castles are falling into disrepair.
Kinay would like to renovate such buildings and convert them into hotels. An expensive undertaking, the cost risk is high. “I’m aware of that, but I still want to try.” Kinay has been holding concrete discussions with owners since June; some projects are already in the due diligence phase and the first results should be available soon.
Kinay also wants to enter the city hotel industry; he is currently focusing on two projects in the city of Vienna. He has “a different kind” of hotels in mind. “In tourism you have to be able to inspire people,” was always his credo. “So what can I do differently to inspire people?”
Kinay wants to focus on three trends that he believes are promising for the future: gastronomy, health and art and culture. This time Kinay “doesn’t want to work alone, but in a consortium with external partners”. With industry experts and financial investors. The plan is to acquire the properties and operate them yourself or lease them out.
How do you feel back in Austria after a long time in the USA and Turkey? “Austria is a small country, but very strong. I am very happy to be here again,” says Kinay, who has both red-white-red and Turkish citizenship. His wife, the Turkish film producer Elif Dagdeviren decided to come to Vienna.
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However, he is more skeptical about politics: “After so many years, the economic policy statements are still the same as they were back then. But the world is changing and you need new concepts, that is the task of the new government.”
In his career as an entrepreneur, Kinay gained a lot of experience, and not just positive ones. “I had successes and failures. But you also learn through failure.”
After studying medicine in Vienna, Kinay built with his friend and partner Oguz Serim the tour operator Gulet became the market leader and took over the AUA subsidiary Touropa. In 2000 he founded Magic Life, the first all-inclusive holiday clubs. At its peak, the chain had 23 hotels with 20,000 beds and 8,000 employees in Turkey, Spain, Greece, etc. Magic Life and Gulet Touropa sent around 750,000 Austrians on vacation every year.
However, the successful Kinay failed with a luxury hotel project on the small Caribbean island of Dellis Cay not far from the Bahamas. In connection with a donation, there were allegations of corruption against Kinay and the governor of the island group (Turks and Caicos), the half-finished luxury villas were confiscated, and Interpol issued an arrest warrant. This has now been lifted, but there are still fierce lawsuits for damages in the order of 300 million euros. Kinay continues to deny all allegations. He very much hopes “that at some point there will be justice and that I will be compensated for the damage.”