Dear Insiders,
In Turkey, tourism figures, in particular from Western source markets, have fallen dramatically - and Russian guests are absent altogether this year. There are crises everywhere. The Turkish Minister for Tourism is going to tour India and China in an attempt to drum up new guests.
The Swedes are trying to make the best of the situation: As part of their "Fast Track to Integration" scheme, they are collaborating with authorities in order to make kitchen staff and chefs out of the pool of refugees in the country. It's an experiment, but a good one.
Another experiment is the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. A Dutch hotelier and a Viennese wine tavern owner accept the virtual currency - but a whole lot more remain sceptical.
Slowly, it can no longer be denied that Alpine winter sport hotels will no longer be able to rely on "timely" snow for the high season. The weather has ruined the start into the winter season for the Austrians, only the glacier hoteliers were happy. And another statistic became apparent with regard to Austrian travel destinations: There's a certain fear with regard to "dangerous" countries. Terror now affects everybody - see Turkey.
Neue Dorint GmbH also granted us an insight into its balance sheet 2014: Dorint Hotels & Resorts report a "black zero" for 2014. Liquidity remains tight, but 2015 will solve various problems from 2014 - as Dirk Iserlohe from the parent company E&P explains.
AccorHotels and Eurazeo have together founded a new company which appears to be a shrewd finance vehicle for improving real estate values and hotel performance. Hilton adds to the sea of brands with "Tru", the Chinese love Europe and Germany as travel destination, Althoff Hotels want to expand and hand over greater responsibility, and our trend scout Oliver Pichler has identified high quality paper as success factor in the online era.
And last but not least about us and the ITB: With Private Palace Hotels, the team of exhibitors at our joint stand "World of Hospitality" in Hall 9 is now complete. Next week, we'll present all our stand partners. – The full editorial…
