The records first: 250.000 visitors were counted at Fitur Madrid last week, and 14 million tourists in the country in 2023. Travellers spent an average of €283 per night. KPIs are skyrocketing and hotel investments have exploded. The whole of Spain is booming. Sarah Douag with pleasing facts and figures.
A new study in Austria dispels prejudices: Respondents like the sector, their bosses and the good feeling that their job is more secure than those on offer in other industries. Fred Fettner delved deeper into the survey and found inconsistencies, but also employees' wishes: more part-time work and a bit of home office, please.
More and more property owners are now focusing on the substance of their properties, quite literally: Old building materials are valuable. And climate-friendly refurbishment, recycling these materials, can also pay off over the life cycle of the property. And so we see how the mono-structure of an office is transformed into an attractive mixed-use environment with residential, leisure and work elements. Bea Boutonnet listened to another discussion.
Accor is selling parts of its Vacation Club to Travel + Leisure, a former publisher with a great travel magazine of that name, which was looking for new hospitality synergies. An unusual deal.
In its study, Amadeus found out that business trips will no longer be fun trips in the future but must bring the company noticeably more efficiency. Well, let's go then, big corporations! SMEs have long since done their homework.
Whether a mega chain like H-World from China (with its German subsidiary Steigenberger) or the small, fine hotel operator Munich Hotel Partners: Their quarterly and annual financial statements 2023 shine brightly with significant KPI increases.
So let's keep dreaming of good advice, new ideas, but also get you thinking - surf our homepage and the Marketplace. We pick just two topics out: The Icon of the Seas is the most gigantic floating hotel that cruise shipping has ever seen - a colossus for 10,000 people! Hundreds of thousands of people who waited in vain for their train or plane in Germany had less fun this week: Strike was the word of the week. The distribution specialist Quality Reservations worked out here: While the cancellation factor in online sales averages 18% per month in the hotel industry, it rose to 25% in the strike month of January!
It's a shame that Germany is in such a bad position, politically and economically polarised. Our columnist Frank Tetzel summarises the plight in our Politics INSIDE Berlin column.
We have no intention of getting carried away to any depths, quite the opposite: HospitalityInside wants to continue to grow and offer you even more solid stories and top-class events. Yesterday, Kirsten Posautz took over the position of Deputy Editor-in-Chief. Like me, she is a committed full-blooded journalist, researches accurately and writes with passion. She brings over 20 years of hotel expertise from German-speaking Europe. Susanne Stauss, who has represented me for many years, will of course remain in the team and will continue to report for us.
And that completes our editorial team: Nicola Kübler had joined us already in April of last year. She also did her traineeship twelve years ago at a hotel trade magazine and then switched to the daily newspaper, but she has never let go of her fascination with hotels.
With these two colleagues and the eight-member core team of authors in five countries, we have an immense amount of hotel knowledge at our disposal. Embedded in a broad network of experts, we feel we are well equipped for the changes that lie ahead for us and the industry.
And an important source is also you - dear reader! Let us know what you would like to read!
Yours, Maria Pütz-Willems
Editor-in-Chief