From Launch to Landmark Deals: Yigit Sezgin, Founder and Managing Partner, Clé & Partners A Dubai-headquartered strategic advisory and investment platform, founded by Yigit Sezgin, is shaping landmark transactions and pioneering deal structures across global luxury and lifestyle real estate and hospitality markets.

Following a three-decade-long leadership career—including 15 years in C-suite roles across hospitality and real estate—Yigit Sezgin brings deep industry expertise, strategic vision, and a global network built at the highest levels.

From serving as Global Chief of Brand and Commercial at Fairmont to holding a senior role within Accor's Luxury and Lifestyle leadership team, he has helped shape some of the world's most influential hospitality brands.

It is this combination of experience, credibility, and instinct that allows him to place his pin on the world map with confidence, knowing results will follow. And so, for his next chapter, Sezgin chose Dubai.

"Dubai is the land of opportunity," he says. "It is one of the easiest cities in the world to build and scale a business, with unmatched access to capital, talent, and decision-makers. More importantly, it represents what I would call the capital of a new renaissance—defined by curiosity, courage, creativity, and ambition.

"I have previously convinced global organizations to relocate their head- quarters to Dubai, so choosing to base Clé & Partners here was a natural decision.

"It is not only our strategic hub—it is also home. I am a very proud citizen of this extraordinary city."

Sezgin's next chapter began in 2024 with the launch of Clé & Partners, a 360-degree hospitality advisory platform that supports investors across the full investment lifecycle or at targeted points in between, while allowing clients to engage selectively based on specific verticals or challenges. It operates across luxury and lifestyle real estate, hospitality, food and beverage, and entertainment.

He points to Clé & Partners' practitioner-driven foundation as its core differentiator, grounded in real-world execution rather than theoretical consulting. "Every senior partner on the platform brings 25 to 30 years of hands-on, field- based experience, having built, operated, invested in, and scaled real businesses. We advise on what we have actually done," he says. "This experience aggregates into over 300 years of combined senior expertise, particularly across the Global South, where cultural fluency, local intelligence, and long-term relationships are critical. Our access and relationships are reinforced by a highly curated, all-star advisory board, giving us reach that is genuinely difficult to replicate."

Clé & Partners is not only an advisory platform — Sezgin points out — but an active investor across its four key verticals - M&A and capital structuring, hospitality investments, brand architecture, and strategic advisory.

In Clé & Partners' M&A and capital structuring vertical, has already delivered a landmark transaction - successfully executing and closing a US$160 million agreement between Koç Holding, a Fortune Global 500 Turkish multinational industrial conglomerate, and Yıldız Holding, a leading Turkish food-focused group. The agreement enables the transfer of operating rights for flagship marina facilities and their luxury hotel assets in Göcek, within Muğla's Fethiye district—one of Turkey's most prominent coastal tourism hubs. "The transaction required not only technical precision, but deep trust, discretion, and long-term strategic alignment," Sezgin explains.

Source: Miori Gocek, Turkey

Beyond completed deals, Clé & Partners is advising on select high-profile mandates, including an M&A transaction for a leading luxury design-and-build company in Dubai and the structuring of a flagship hotel deal in Istanbul, with capital structure, branding, and operations being shaped concurrently. Clé & Partners also acts as the exclusive strategic hospitality advisor to Omniyat, a prominent Dubai-based luxury real estate developer, with a mandate spanning the UAE, Egypt, and Iraq.

"What differentiates Clé from traditional advisory firms is our structure-first approach," Sezgin says. "We focus on designing the right deal framework before valuation—aligning ownership, governance, brand economics, and operational realities—so value is not only realized at closing, but sustained well beyond it."

The Clé & Partners team has also helped transform the coastal town of Göcek, on Turkey's southwest coast, into a gastro destination through its hospitality investments, including the Aegean restaurant MIORI by the Sea, waterfront lounge dining at Riva Lounge, Italian fine dining at Isabel's, omakase dining at Oko, all-day dining at The Kitchen, and an artisan bakery café, The Bakery.

Sezgin explains that the firm's investment philosophy is built around business modeling and revenue architecture, rather than short-term cost management. "In asset-heavy sectors, true value creation comes from designing strong, diversified revenue flows and ensuring healthy flow-through to the bottom line—not from aggressive cost compression that often weakens the asset over time," he says. "We focus on protecting the underlying asset while enhancing upside through hybrid models. This includes the curation of brand IP, layered brand asset structures, and the integration of complementary revenue streams such as membership platforms, OpCo-driven incomes, strategic partnerships, and curated collaborations."

In doing so, Clé & Partners diversifies risk, limits exposure, and creates resilience across cycles.

"Risk, in our view, is managed through intelligent structuring— aligning ownership, brand economics, and operating models so downside is protected while upside remains scalable and long-term optionality is preserved," Sezgin says. Within its brand architecture vertical, Clé provides end-to-end brand consultancy—spanning strategy and architecture through to digital engagement and experien- tial activation—focused on building leading luxury and lifestyle brands.

To date, the Clé & Partners senior team has developed and repositioned brand platforms for boutique luxury hospitality brand Omoria, global luxury hotel brands Fairmont and Raffles, and experiential hospitality group Fundamental Hospitality. Notably, Fundamental Hospitality is set to launch a US$200 million global expansion program in 2026, with Sezgin taking on a lead role in supporting the group's entry into luxury hotels and branded residences—aimed at shaping fully integrated lifestyle ecosystems that seamlessly unite dining, design, culture, and living.

Source: Omoria Private Residences Dubai Island

"Our belief is that brand strategy, when properly architected and protected, is not a marketing exercise—it is a core value driver and a critical component of hospitality platform investments." Sezgin says.

Sezgin has also led the design and implementation of complex operational frameworks across the hospitality sector, with selected mandates including ultra-luxury resort developments in the Maldives, Oshigali and Infinite Islands, and the development of a multi-brand hospitality platform for a collection house with projects in the Maldives, Egypt, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Greece - to name but a few.

Source: Oshighali - The Maldives

Through this work, Sezgin has gained a clear view into the structural blind spots that most commonly hold hospitality businesses back. "One of the most common blind spots we encounter is short-term decision-making driven by cost-focused investor mindsets, often rooted in cultural habits of cutting corners rather than building sustainable systems," he says. "Cost-cutting at the expense of talent and capability is particularly dangerous in luxury and lifestyle businesses. The damage is rarely immediate or easily measurable—but over time, it leads to an erosion of service quality, brand credibility, and long-term asset value. Reputational damage builds slowly and silently, but once it surfaces, recovery is both expensive and difficult."

Clé & Partners addresses this by designing operational frameworks that protect talent, governance, and accountability, while still maintaining financial discipline. "Our role is to help investors understand where efficiency creates value—and where it quietly destroys it," Sezgin says.

Speaking about the firm's four focus sectors—luxury and lifestyle real estate, hospitality, F&B, and entertainment—Sezgin highlights their ability to create compounding value through the alignment of physical assets and intellectual property. "When real estate, hospitality, F&B, and entertainment are strategically aligned, each layer reinforces the other—driving higher asset values, strengthening brand equity, and increasing durability," he explains. "This ecosystem approach creates long-term customers. Guests, members, and residents evolve into repeat clients and long-term stakeholders who continue to invest across develop- ments and brands within the same platform. This continuity of trust and experience is one of the most powerful, yet under-leveraged, drivers of value."

With headquarters in Dubai, regional offices in Istanbul and London, and eight representation offices across four continents, Clé & Partners operates as a truly global firm. This global footprint gives Sezgin unique insight into the cultural nuances that leaders and investors most often underestimate. "One of the most underestimated realities is that success is not automatically transferable across markets—even within the same country," he says. "A model that performs exceptionally well in Dubai may not work in Abu Dhabi. Each city and destination has its own cultural, economic, and social DNA that must be understood in detail," he says. "At Clé & Partners, we believe in an agile, fluid, and glocalized approach—where global standards are adapted intelligently to local realities. Cultural fluency, adaptation, and intellectual honesty are key. Working with a partner like Clé significantly reduces the risk of costly mistakes."

Reflecting on Clé & Partners' trajectory to date, Sezgin highlights the firm's establishment as a trusted platform backed by senior partners and an experienced advisory board, its ability to scale through repeat client engagements and referrals, and its track record of delivering landmark transactions and brand signings across global resort markets.

Building on this foundation, he expresses confidence in the firm's forward strategy- to further develop its investment arm, actively investing and curating products together with its partners and investors across every vertical Clé & Partners operates in. "We aim to design and own intellectual property, challenge the status quo, expand across geographies, and build meaningful platforms—while genuinely having fun throughout the journey," Sezgin concludes.

Yigit Sezgin, Founder and Managing Partner, Clé & Partners