News & Stories

Moena. AlpNet, the alpine-covering platform for the better marketing of the Alps, once again achieved a little more reach at their latest meeting called "theAlps" and even had visitors from the Far East. AlpNet President Josef Margreiter sees the consortium slowly coming into calmer waters.

Munich/Vienna. Austrian hotelier Harald Ultsch has now ventured a step into the increasingly competitive hotel market in Munich with his chain Harry's Home. He sees better prospects there, not only because Munich applies a lower rate of VAT to Austria. His concept fits well into the current line of smart and low-budget lifestyle hotels of which there are more and more springing up in Bavaria's booming regional capital.

Munich. "Live Life Aloft". There could be no peppier name for the concept than these three words; consequently, Munich's aloft lobby should be filled with cheeping and beeping, roaring and drumming, mumbling and toasting from now on. The scene of lifestyle travellers is to establish itself in one large and limitless room, around a billiard table, bar and soft chairs. Starwood Hotels & Resorts hopes the same from aloft Stuttgart, which opened at the same time. Starwood is fabulous at branding and marketing; however, whether the American way of life can be transferred to Germany remains to be seen.

Vienna. Insolvencies in Austria aren't slowing: Now, the Adeo Hotel Group has filed for insolvency. Alpin Hotels are allegedly unaffected.

Amsterdam. While internet giants founded in western countries are busy bragging about their concepts, technology, number of visitors or bookings, Chinese operators are slowly but surely catching up. Last month, the hospitality world was surprised to discover that a super hotel chain could emerge from the ongoing talks between Chinese hotel groups Jin Jiang and Plateno. China’s largest online platform for vacation rentals also plans to set up branches abroad and could slow down Airbnb's pace.

Amsterdam. Fee-based portals for the mediation of private accommodation such as Airbnb and Wimdu are still not very popular in Germany. More still: The accommodation concepts as an alternative to hotels and pensions are finding an increasing number of opponents in this country.

Hamburg/Frankfurt. The German Novum Hotels Holding with 49 hotels has retrospectively taken over the Winters Hotel Company with six hotels with retrospective effect to the beginning of 2015. Novum announced this yesterday. It will not be the last takeover for Novum.

Berlin. GCH Hotel Group recently analysed evaluation portals, metasearch engines, and OTA portals in great detail in order to learn from them: the hotels under the GCH roof are to be marketed more intensely than ever in the future via a brand-focused presentation on its own website. "The fees need to generate return," says Bart Beerkens, Vice President Commercial describing the expectations of GCH Hotel Group's, one of the biggest groups in Central Europe with 112 hotels – mostly running under franchise brands of international chains. Moreover, GCH aims at honing their profile as a service provider in the field of B2B.

Shanghai. A mega-mega merger is at hand in China: The two giants there, Jin Jiang and Plateno Hotels, should merge. Moreover, Jin Jiang still wants to convert its global operator, Interstate, into cash. Is all of this in preparation for the purchase of Starwood Hotels? The background circumstances.

Cologne. The strategy remains: radically streamline and solve problems! "I use my red pen everywhere," Dirk Iserlohe says. The CEO of the Dorint parent E&P Holding GmbH & Co KG presented hospitalityInside.com with a preview of the Profit & Loss account for 2014. According to this account, Neue Dorint GmbH will improve its operating result by EUR 3.5 million and in the end could even come close to a "black zero" or even move further into the profit zone. There remain questions with regard to refinancing though, on lease deferrals and pending tax disputes. 2015 is then finally expected to mark the breakthrough, Iserlohe explained and repeated, as he did in the last interview 17 months ago: "Dorint is no longer burning money!"