Mr. Kasikci leads Bentley Management, 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, his 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 Mr. Kasikci’s 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. Mr. 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 Hills, which achieved Five Star status and became the only new hotel in California to receive the 2010 Forbes Five Star Award.
A graduate of the Hotel and Catering College in Tegernsee, Germany, he holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Claremont Graduate University, Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management School, in California. Following his apprenticeship at Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich, Germany, Mr. Kasikci held several senior management positions with leading hotels in Germany and 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.