Charlie MacGregor


Charlie MacGregor is a Scottish entrepreneur, CEO and founder of The Student Hotel, and co-founder of NGO Movement on the Ground. MacGregor was born and raised in Edinburgh, before buying a student housing company aged 25.

The Student Hotel (TSH)

MacGregor founded TSH in 2006 as a hotel chain and co-working space based in Amsterdam that caters for students, business travelers and holiday-makers. Locations include Amsterdam, Paris, Florence, Dresden and Rotterdam.
The Student Hotel has raised investments including €150 million from Perella Weinberg Real Estate in 2014 and €100 million from APG in 2015. The chain is currently investing €1.8bn in its international growth strategy and plans to open 41 sites by 2021.
Under MacGregor’s leadership, TSH has been acknowledged by Deloitte as one of 51 best managed companies in the Netherlands 2017-18, achieving Gold status, having been included for more than four years.

Movement on the Ground

MacGregor is also a co-founder and member of Movement on the Ground, a non-profit foundation responding to the global refugee crisis.
After visiting Lesvos, Greece, in 2015, MacGregor came up with the idea for The Movement Hotel: a temporary hotel run by asylum seekers, as a way for them to gain experience, with profits reinvested to train more refugees.
The hotel was located in Bijlmerbajes prison, a former prison in Amsterdam, and opened in September 2017. In the same building other successful initiatives took place. Refugee Company foundation opened restaurant A Beautiful Mess, which won Entree Awards’ Best off the Grid Award in 2017.