Strong pipelines and profits

Frankfurt am Main. As reported, the 2013 balance sheet has provided the French budget chain B&B Hotels with their best figures. The company of the American large investor, Carlyle, has otherwise produced no great headlines. A demeanour of Napoleonic grandeur is foreign to B&B; they do, however, plough through their markets with Prussian discipline. The series "A new hotel per month" will be also maintained for the "foreseeable future". Alongside France, Germany, as it is with Accor, has become the second-most important market and B&B Germany Managing Director Mark Thompson has nothing at all against the fact that Motel One has developed into an international chain. He has another perspective.

Berlin. The Accor brand ibis has freed itself from its last flaw and the old plastic wet room is finally a thing of the past. The contemporary tiled bathroom, the new room and snazzy lobby now put Europe's biggest hotel chain's economy brand back in the running - not only in comparison to the German low budget chain Motel One, but also worldwide. This product and its value-for-money are also intended to appeal to the burgeoning middle classes in Asia and South America: "ibis is the locomotive for Accor", new Accor CEO Sébastien Bazin stressed last Monday in the new ibis Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin, "and we will build on the innovation there."

London/Munich. Great Britain's biggest budget hotel chain has set its sights on the German market: Premier Inn counts a total of 670 hotels, most of them located in Great Britain, the minority in the Middle East, Asia Pacific and India. In Britain, the group operates 53,000 rooms. CEO Mark Anderson told hospitalityInside.com at the Expo Real that the group intends to raise capacity in Great Britain alone by a further 50 percent. Behind Premier Inn is the listed and powerful brewery, restaurant and public house group Whitbread. The hotel subsidiary also has an excellent credit rating, and so Mark Anderson's most important statement sounds like a field march: "We're buying!" Premier Inn will buy not only the land, but will also develop and operate the hotels itself. The group will stay away from franchising. Accor, B&B and Motel One are watching closely.

Munich. Dieter Mueller is deeply relaxed. In Munich, in front of him on the conference table there are Scottish whiskey candies in a bowl; they are a sweet symbol of the successful Motel One launch in Edinburgh in January. There, the egg chairs by Arne Jacobsen, which are typical for Motel One, have a tartan pattern; however, apart from that, the German low budget design chain wants to remain faithful to its chosen path, also abroad. The success proves the chain right, as shown in the annual report 2012 last week: the net profit is nearly 21 million Euro, which is six million more than in the previous year. Where does the founder and CEO of the Motel One Group see the saturation limit of a city, which micro locations is he aiming for, will he be able to maintain the fixed-rate model abroad, and when will he sell? Dieter Mueller and his wife Uschi Schelle-Mueller, responsible for marketing and design in the business, openly talked with hospitalityInside.com about the status quo and the tricks of the trade. "Before we feel the pain, the world has to be suffering really badly," says Mueller relaxed.