COVID-19 live blog roundup: hotel projects status in DACH

by | 20 May 2020 | Projects

(Photo from Unsplash by Ansgar Scheffold)

We summarise updates shared on the TOPHOTELNEWS Covid-19 live blog to draw a picture of how DACH’s hotel projects industry is negotiating the ongoing crisis.

The international hospitality industry has been sent into a tailspin with the sudden onslaught of the coronavirus crisis. From lockdowns to travel bans and border closures, hotels, bars and restaurants are having to navigate more uncertain waters than ever before.

TOPHOTELPROJECTS has been tracking in real time the developments within the industry as it reacts to the continuing crisis, and we recap some of the recent activity that has been happening in the DACH region in response to the pandemic.

Reasons for optimism

With Germany becoming one of the first countries in Europe to begin reopening, the hospitality industry in the DACH region is breathing a sigh of relief as projects come back online and staff go back to work.

There is lots of good news coming out of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, which were some of the earliest countries to impose lockdowns and perform efficient contact tracing and testing. The construction of the Super 8 hotel in Chemnitz, Germany is ongoing, as are remodelling works of a rooftop property in St. Pauli, Hamburg into a new nHow hotel. Restoration and conversion works on the Palace Luzern hotel in Switzerland are continuing, meanwhile, and the Adina aparthotel in Vienna shows no signs of slowing down on its construction, as it holds firm to a planned opening in the last quarter of this year. A hotly anticipated Six Senses project planned in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, is still very much underway too, and is expected to be finished some time in 2021. Lastly, hotel group NH is slowly reopening its properties in the DACH region, a good sign for things to come.

Germany pins hopes on domestic tourism

According to a recent Skift article, the German hospitality market looks poised to make a swifter recovery than many other European countries, due to comparatively high rates of domestic tourism. Germany has a healthy contingent of domestic travelers who are always keen to explore attractions on their own doorstep, while an inherent trust in the government and authority means that these tourists will likely have faith in the capacity of hotels and F&B outlets to abide by strict hygiene and sanitation protocols, a fact that is likely to aid a quicker comeback for hospitality venues. Germany’s impressive rail network could also have an important role to play here, since it provides a viable alternative to air travel in many cases.

“Much short- to medium-term recovery in Europe relies on airlines, and the outlook there doesn’t look good,” said STR Managing Director Robin Rossman, before adding that, in Germany, tourism is “very domestic, 95 percent domestic, but it is helpful to look to what drove recovery there since they controlled the virus about two months ahead of the rest of the world.”