News & Stories
Erbach. The current trend towards holidaying at home is confirmed by the plan to build a large resort in central Germany's Odenwald - at an acceptable distance from Frankfurt. When it's finished, 720 beds are to compete with the Fleesensee resort in Northern Germany or the Club Aldiana in Southern Germany. Negotiations with banks and operators are underway; given the three-digit investment sum, firm acceptances have still to be secured.
Frankfurt. The InterContinental Hotels Group would like to enter the resort market in its "key country" Germany. The brand chosen for this purpose has, however, lost some of its shine over recent years.
Hamburg. Business travels are decreasing, while conferences and meetings are being rationalised. Companies are trying to curb costs and the hotel industry is suffering as a result. This is a well-known scenario in the meantime. However, not all segments are affected - there is still some business, but partly with different focuses. Medium-sized conference hotels, for example, are benefiting from the collapse of the top hotels. Or the pure incentive enjoyment is making way for demanding advanced training programmes. The professional conference hotel chains, however, have not consorted with the ranks of the moaners. Their business is humming. Ralph Langrock, author for hospitalityInside.com, has observed the market in a differentiated way. This is the first of two articles: the current situation.
Prague. Prague is for some a little too picture postcard perfect. The city of a hundred spires can be a wide-eyed wonder on the one hand and is a Disneyesque cliché on the other. Without doubt however Prague is a font of architectural heritage that seems to have no limit. From Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, Neo-Renaissance, Rococo and Baroque to more modernist Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Cubism and functionalist modernism. Within this world hotel developers have to work hard to find sites and then comply with the strict local planning regulations to keep within the city’s UNESCO listing as a World Heritage Site. A look at four new hotels in Prague: The Augustine, the Buddha Bar Hotel, the Kempinski Hybernská and the Sheraton Prague.
Prague. Without question Prague is suffering along with the international hotel community as the worldwide recession takes grip. And whatever the various economic indicators say with regard to the crisis bottoming out and confidence returning, the fact is that unemployment is set to continue to rise well into 2010. This will continue to impact both businesses looking to further reduce costs and leisure travellers being more carful with the use of their discretionary spending power on short or long holidays.
Tripolis/Lausanne. In a few short years, Libya has gone from being labelled a ‘pariah state’ to being tipped as the next ‘hot’ tourist destination. Indeed, Libya, along with Algeria, was named as a country to watch at the World Travel Market in 2007. There is no doubt that the destination offers some unique features to tourists, including an extensive undeveloped Mediterranean seacoast, spectacular ruins and archaeological sites, as well as vast expanses of desert. Nevertheless, business travel driven by the country’s energy sector has been the mainstay of the country’s inbound tourism. Libya currently has 2,864 hotel rooms of international standard in the pipeline, all of which should have entered the market by early 2011.
Frankfurt. At the shareholder meeting of the Aldiana GmbH, Peter Wennel was elected Chairman of the Managing Board. In future, he is also responsible for Paradise Hotels, whose company has been integrated in Aldiana, too.
Frankfurt. Around one half of all companies in Germany plan just as many business trips for 2009 as for 2008. In fact, every tenth company expects the frequency of their business trips to increase. One the other hand, around one third of companies will reduce the number of trips made. And the hotels too will feel the effects.
Portorož. With two new hotels on the Slovenian and Croatian Adriatic coast, Kempinski Hotels & Resort has broken new ground in Europe. Kempinski opened the Palace Portorož on the Slovenian coast and spa town of Portorož in October of last year. The almost 100 year old grand hotel has been painstakingly renovated and extended. Occupancy is, however, still low with most guests coming from neighbouring Italy. On the other side of the bay, almost in view, the Kempinski Hotel Adriatic will open on 1st August after repeated delays. The hotel will offer the first 18-hole championship golf course in Istria. In the background though, GMs are struggling against incomplete infrastructure, lack of facilities and pending court proceedings.
Jeddah. The increase in religious tourism continues to drive the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's real estate growth. Pilgrims visiting the holy cities of Makkah and Medina are expected to reach 8 million by next year according to recent Saudi government figures.