Quiet luxury, loud purpose: How Amarla is building a bigger kind of hospitality

Founded in 2017, Amarla began with a clear idea: create boutique hotels in Latin America’s historic districts that deliver “barefoot, and quiet, luxury”, thoughtfully designed spaces where every detail earns its place, and every stay leaves a mark. The group expanded with Amarla Cartagena and later opened Amarla Casco Viejo. Alongside the hotels, the group also includes Kaandela, a restaurant providing Panamanian-inspired cuisine that connects land, produce, and people. 

For María Antonieta Ramírez, Group Director of the Amarla brands, the mission goes beyond design or service standards. “Progress in hospitality,” she says, “is the ability to reach the hearts of the people who visit you, to leave them with a memory they carry.” 

She continues, “Amarla comes from Sanskrit. It means purity, and it connects to our intentions and what we do as a company.” It’s hospitality designed to connect, to guests and to place.

Believing that true hospitality goes beyond comfort to creating a positive and lasting impact, Amarla are also deeply committed to supporting their local communities through meaningful initiatives like working to end bullying and promote positive social interactions among children and teenagers in Panama, providing critical healthcare for children and young adults affected by complex liver diseases, and jaguar protection in Panama. 

Amarla’s guest is not corporate or transactional. They are, as María puts it, the Free Independent Traveller (FIT), drawn to culture, art, and authentic local experiences. Some rooms don’t even include televisions by design, because the brand wants guests to reconnect with themselves and with Panama.

Before Cloudbeds, the team used a PMS that worked for their origin market, but didn’t translate well operationally in Panama, felt costly, and made training harder than it needed to be. 

When it came to looking for a new solution, the Amarla team didn’t want “enterprise complexity.” They wanted a PMS that’s intuitive for teams and fast to learn, a setup that supports direct bookings and multi-channel distribution without relying on patchwork tools, the flexibility to integrate seamlessly with partners across revenue management, analytics, invoicing, and restaurant operations, and responsive support delivered consistently across regions and languages.

As María puts it, “Small hotels also deserve something great, something that flows.”

During a feasibility trip tied to future expansion (including inspections in Puerto Rico’s Old San Juan), a trusted partner recommended Cloudbeds. Amarla compared options, but Cloudbeds quickly became the clear winner.

Cloudbeds stood out for what María repeatedly calls a “democratic” platform: powerful enough for serious operators, accessible enough for boutique teams, and flexible enough to connect with the wider ecosystem.

“Cloudbeds is much more friendly. Everything flows. My team learned it faster, and that gives us more time to focus on our guests.”

Today, Amarla uses the Cloudbeds PMS, Channel Manager, and Booking Engine. Bringing these together simplified operations and reduced the need for multiple paid systems. As María notes, a year into using Cloudbeds, the team has seen zero connectivity issues.

Beyond that, Amarla makes use of Cloudbeds’ powerful integration capabilities. Their ecosystem includes OpenTable for the restaurant, fully integrated with Cloudbeds; electronic invoicing through a local provider to meet Panama’s digital compliance requirements; Zapier, enhanced by a paid custom build tailored to their specific workflow needs; outsourced SEO and Google Analytics, with pixel tracking tied back to Cloudbeds to measure true campaign ROI; and outsourced revenue management connected via Cloudbeds’ open API, powering daily dashboards and real-time pickup visibility.

The biggest shift wasn’t a flashy feature, it was ease.

Training on the prior PMS was difficult and time-consuming. With Cloudbeds, the front desk team found the platform more intuitive, with an interactive rack that makes it simple to manage rooms and pull reports. Training time was approximately one to one-and-a-half months, including guided onboarding and follow-ups—supported through email and WhatsApp.

Cloudbeds didn’t just support execution, it supported follow-through.

Amarla is continuing to explore expansion on their terms: boutique scale, deep personalization, and quiet luxury with real purpose.

And through it all, the brand name remains the anchor.

For Amarla, Cloudbeds isn’t just software, it’s a partner offering fast support, a user-friendly platform, a global presence, and the flexibility of an open API. As María puts it, “The support is fast, and in hospitality, speed matters. You feel that Cloudbeds is close to you, and closeness is essential in this industry.”

She continues, “Cloudbeds democratized hospitality for us. Small hotels deserve powerful tools too, without the complexity built for massive resorts.”