Kempinski has lost its group chief executive. Four more senior executives have gone with her. A fifth has resigned. Skift reported the departures on Monday 19 October at 17:37 UTC, citing multiple sources.
Kempinski did not answer Skift's detailed questions, and Barbara Muckermann declined to comment. No company statement backs the report. The group's press room carries nothing on the departures.
Who has gone
Skift named five executives. Gordon Drake, chief financial officer. Karin Raguin, chief human resources officer. Frank Veenstra, chief development officer. Barbara Biffi, chief brand officer. All four have left.
Massimo Brancaleoni, chief commercial officer, has resigned. Skift recorded his exit date as unclear.
The four posts covered finance, people, development and brand.
The sixth name
Riko van Santen, Kempinski's chief information officer, took the same post at Scenic Group. PAX News reported the appointment on 1 September 2026 and recorded his previous post as Kempinski.
Van Santen was not part of the October wave. Skift's own list is five.
Sale talk from one source
Skift's sources put a sale in play. The owners had been seeking a financial buyer. One person familiar with the talks said some prospective buyers balked at the asking price.
In the same account, Muckermann had been speaking with bankers and capital providers about financing further hotel purchases.
No transaction has been announced. No buyer has been named. Kempinski has not confirmed a sale process. A search of English and German coverage returned the claim in Skift and in the outlets repeating Skift.
The numbers the exits land on
Kempinski reports 74 hotels and residences in 33 countries. It manages most of them for independent owners. The majority owner is the royal family of Bahrain.
Public filings show consolidated revenue fell to €164.6 million in 2024 from €174.9 million. Management-fee revenue declined to €41.8 million. Total hotel revenue fell 3 percent. Net profit rose to €17.6 million. The management report forecast a sharp drop in 2025 pretax profit.
The turnaround without its author
Muckermann told Hotel vor9 in April 2026 that she had cut the portfolio from 82 hotels to 75, because some houses did not fit the ultra-luxury profile. She announced 34 new projects inside three years.
She described the Augustine Hotel purchase in Prague as Kempinski's first full acquisition since the Vier Jahreszeiten in Munich in 1970. She said management contracts alone are not enough to control the guest experience.
The same interview set out the rest of the plan. At least three hotels in the United States to start, with talks already running. A headquarters move from Geneva to Dubai in preparation. Entry into the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and France. Hamburg named as a German target.
The group has named no one to carry any of those plans.
Two seats filled, the top one empty
Noel Attard is chief development officer. Andrea Vanni is chief financial officer. Skift records the board presenting both appointments as continuity in the transformation.
Skift records speculation that Chairman René Nijhof takes the group chief executive role on an interim basis. The group has named no successor to Muckermann.