News & Stories

Berlin. From a German to a European to a global group: The Berlin HR Group is once again accelerating its expansion course and grows to 145 hotels and 20 signed projects with the triangular deal around HRG, Vienna House and Wyndham announced yesterday. It implies share transfers, property changes, a brand sale, a franchise agreement and a tricky ownership and operator structure. And all this between four countries: Thailand, Austria, Germany and the USA. This deal is hard to understand in two minutes.

Frankfurt. In June 2021, the Flemings Hotels group parted with four of its properties; three of them were located in the trade fair city, which was hit very hard by corona. This gave the family-run group enough air to keep breathing; now, CEO Rob Hornman is even talking about expansion again, also as a white label for other brands. Under the Flemings roof, a new brand architecture has to be established and F&B is the current king of cash.

Munich. On Tuesday of this week, Ruby made an "epochal" decision: The Lifestyle Group will massively upgrade the status of its employees, introduce a 35-hour week, make everyone's working hours more flexible, allow workation in other European countries, and will finally give employees a share in the company's profits. Personnel costs are shooting up. "We don't have to do all this, we want to," says CEO Michael Struck. He is thinking far into the future. He doesn’t want to fail because of the current crises and cost increases, and rather wants to expand further with Ruby Leisure Hotels.

Munich. The home office trend promoted by the pandemic has brought another development: the office day trend. As a booking platform, MyFlexHome has turned this into a business model and sells individual hotel nights in a monthly subscription model. So far, this is only offered in Munich, but other cities are planned.

Amsterdam. Performance indicators are back in the green for Pierre & Vacances. The French Group which narrowly escaped bankruptcy recently got approval from shareholders and creditors to complete its restructuring plan. This includes the completion of Center Parcs renovations across Europe.

Dresden. At the beginning of June, the mightyTwice Hotel in Dresden opened its doors and became the 13th hotel of the private hotel operating company Halbersbacher Hospitality, headquartered in Bad Doberan, Germany. A few days later, the 82-room Falkenstein Hotel in Inzell was taken over. At the same time, the company celebrated its tenth anniversary and announced details of its planned expansion in Thailand.

San Francisco. During the pandemic, while the world stood still for months, Amazon was doing business like there was no tomorrow. The corporation made billions of dollars in extra revenue when people shopped online for everything while in quarantine. Today, as the world is suffering from soaring inflation, another company is taking advantage of the situation: Airbnb. The platform is indeed seeing inflation as an "economic opportunity" to recruit more hosts. The latest news regarding the controversial rental platform.

Cologne. The German Dorint and the Spanish Barceló Hotels have been marketing each other's hotels on their websites since 1 July. The new distribution alliance sounds reasonable. But Barceló has also learned from the pandemic and wants to expand more in Central Europe and even buy hotel groups.

Frankfurt/M. The employee shortage has everyone firmly in its grip, all over Europe. That's why Best Western is in the process of setting up Human Resources Services as a separate service for the first time: a support service with solutions for member hotels in ten countries. Marcus Smola says that the idea could become something more. An update with the Managing Director of BWH Hotel Group Central Europe on the current situation, sustainability and digitalisation, direct bookings and soft brands.

Paris. From October 1, 2022, Accor will be structured around two dedicated divisions: "Economy, Midscale & Premium Division" and "Luxury & Lifestyle Division".