Booking Holdings leases over 8,000 square meters in Chapman Taylor-designed U-Center, Bucharest
Our client Forte Partners has announced the lease of over 8,000 square meters in the U-Center office complex to Booking Holdings Inc., owners of Booking.com. This new workplace will become headquarters for its inaugural ‘Centre of Excellence’, in Bucharest, Romania.
Booking Holdings owns brands and businesses including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, OpenTable and Rentalcars.com. The Centre of Excellence will serve as a hub for specialised and highly skilled talent, leading industry best practices, software development and collaboration opportunities across its Cybersecurity, IT and Finance functions.
100% of the 32,000 square meters of office space available in this first phase of U-Center is now leased. Elena Tecuță, Leasing Manager Forte Partners, says, "We are honoured and proud that Booking Holdings Inc., a company that carefully selects the office spaces in which it operates in all the countries where it is present, has chosen U-Center. This is solid confirmation of Forte Partners' strategy to develop sustainable office projects, built with care for the tenant companies, their employees, and the local communities."
Completed in Q3 2021, the first phase of the U-Center office project obtained LEED Platinum certification with a score of 85, one of the highest LEED v4 certifications obtained in Romania. Construction works on the second phase of the project commenced in 2021. This Prague Studio-led project is the latest addition to Chapman Taylor’s portfolio of in-demand office space.
Booking Holdings will also be a key tenant at our Manchester Goods Yard development in the UK, an office that also has impressive sustainability credentials. Certified BREEAM Excellent and built using off-site Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) in order to reduce waste, improve quality and minimise carbon footprint, its design embraces health and wellbeing with nature in order to create a vibrant environment for people to enjoy and to promote creativity.