"Prodinger Tourism Real Estate Summit" Held In Kitzbuhel
The "Prodinger Summit" was held in Kitzbühel, about the latest developments in the alpine holiday hotel industry, met with enormous industry interest. 220 participants attended the tourism real estate summit. Presentations, discussions and questions from the audience were of a high standard. The great investor interest is generally remarkable. It turns out that individual hotel operators are looking at this area much more offensively than large institutional investors.
The alpine hotel market still consists of 71 percent family-run independent hotels. However, more and more brands of international hotel groups (such as Dorint, Arcona and Kempinski) and national hotel companies (such as AlpenParks, Alps Residenz, Vaya) are gaining a foothold in Austria's mountains. Many players in the Alpine region made interesting statements at the all-day summit. Alexander Winter, arcona Hotels & Resorts, who had started the “city exodus” with the sale of the portfolio to Vienna House in 2019, said that it was “pointless to simply put concepts that work in the city over holiday hotels.” Yannick Wagner leads Accor's broad "brand bouquet" into the meeting: "I can definitely imagine a Jo&Joe as a mountain hotel, a Novotel less". Kitzbühel is the starting point for the newly established Dorint (DHI) Group. It was crucial for us to create a product that works optimally all year round. If only to have the employee market under control”. Jörg Böckeler addressed a topic that concerns all representatives of the international chains. After all, welcoming guests all year round has top priority for newcomers to the alpine market.
Manfred Schekulin, tax consultant at Prodinger, presented benchmarks from 16 top Austrian hotels whose GOP is an average of 28 percent of sales and which employ 1.3 people per room. The range of fluctuation in the costs per employee (on average 37,000 euros) is relatively small, and the turnover per room, which at Stanglwirt and Stock-Resort reaches over 200,000 euros a year, is considerable. “On average, depreciation is a quarter of the investment. So much more is invested than depreciated,” Schekulin pointed out to the enormous willingness to provide quality.
Investoren haben während Corona viel Geld eingesammelt. Das mag eine Ursache dafür sein, dass Investorenmodelle wie Buy-2-let bei zahlreichen Projekten der jüngsten Vergangenheit genutzt werden. Rund um diese Thematik entbrannte die erwartet heiße Diskussion. Die erfolgreichen Platzhirsche dieses Segments, Gerhard Brix, Alps Resort, und Stefan Rohrmoser, AlpenParks, konnten das Funktionieren des Modells über Jahrzehnte belegen. Gerade wenn Infrastrukturen, wie Restaurant und Rezeption, im Besitz des Entwicklers verbleiben, sei der Hotelbetrieb langfristig garantiert.
As several discussions and lectures made clear, financing is not a problem if committed hoteliers orientate themselves with innovative concepts exactly in line with current trends. Architecture and design play a dominant role. As the example of Bad Gastein shows, emotions and new financiers can give the domestic hotel industry decisive impetus. Finally, it was mentioned that hundreds of hotels are likely to come onto the market in the next few years due to uncertain operational succession.
