analysis
Far too few apartments are built throughout Germany, and new hotels are being built. The reason is in profit struts – not only from investors, but also from cities.
For the normal traveler, who has no idea of ”Hospitality architecture” and their “continuous materiality with a regional reference”, new hotel buildings are usually hard to distinguish: sober facades with monotonous window rows in sometimes brighter, sometimes darker, but mostly brown masonry. City image upgrading: rare.
New hotels are more likely to speak a functional architectural language – perhaps also to give the impression outside that is valued by customers inside: well to fall asleep.
“In particular, business travelers are hardly interested in the individuality of a hotel,” says Tobias Ehlen, professor at the Touristik/Transport department of the Worms University of Applied Sciences. “They appreciate chain hotels because they can usually be safe at any location: the room is clean, breakfast is right, there is a reasonable bed and the WiFi is quick. Who is still interested in a wardrobe in the hotel room today?”
Visitor and Number of tourists climb
Such mostly wardrobe -free buildings have been created, especially in the past five years and especially where the freight station once fell into disrepair or the department store was to be built up.
“Nine new hotel openings in Augsburg”, “Betting number in Ravensburg has doubled,” “Betten-Boom in Bochum” headlined regional daily newspapers and internet portals. And you will continue to do it: 135 hotels with 20,000 rooms are to be opened in this year alone, as the Guelgast hospitality consultancy estimates.
The accommodation construction is not limited to metropolitan areas. “The market is largely saturated in metropolises and many major cities, the so-called 'A or B locations',” says expert Ehlen. The market was already overheated before Corona. Now hotel chains were also looking for project opportunities in medium -sized cities.
The need is there: in the past 20 years until pandemic, bed demand in Germany rose from 340 million to almost 500 million overnight stays. Even now, according to Lockdown and Corona, the figures from the Federal Statistical Office almost look as if a virus had never broken over through the industry.
“A very interesting asset class”
Curvend diagrams that show from the bottom right top to the top right, such as the development of overnight figures, have an attractive effect on finance people who do not know where to put it with their money. The real estate service and investment company CBRE sees returns for German hotels with lease contracts with more than five percent.
This seems to be a saving port, for example, for pension funds, for example, which in other forms of investment, for example during the lengthy low interest rate phase, could hardly increase the capital of their deposits.
“Hotel properties are a very interesting asset class for investors. You benefit from attractive returns, inflation protection, low additional costs and a positive view of the travel and tourism market,” quotes the general hotel and catering newspaper, for example. He plans and controls the development and growth of the “B&B Hotels” in Central and Northern Europe and is one of the speakers at the “German Hotel Congress 2025” in Mainz.
Chain around chain settles
In 2009 “B&B” also opened a house. Others followed: “Me and All”, “The Niu”, “Super 8” and “H2”. Until the end, a new house of a hotel chain opened almost every year in the Rhineland-Palatinate capital Mainz with 222,000 inhabitants. They set up a total of 1,000 beds.
190 more hotel beds are to find a home in the city center on the former Karstadt site. At the opening of the last newcomer a year ago, the Mainz economic director Manuela Matz (SPD) said: “Our city recorded the number of guests every year. We need hotels for that.”
Rental returns are lower than hotel returns
“We need apartments,” says social associations, from politics or simply those who have to frustrate the dreams of changing the wallpaper in the event of an dates for the apartment. Why are your own residents on the street in Mainz and many other cities while travelers check cheap?
In social housing, 45 square meters are the minimum size of a rental apartment; The hotel room has an average of ten square meters: measured solely at the openings of new hotel rooms and apartments, 250 apartments could have been created in Mainz.
Again the “cash cow” moo: real estate experts currently see rental trends on average at an average of 3.5 percent. As a reminder: the hotel return promises five. Tenants cannot necessarily pay more rent because they have received a salary increase. Hotels, on the other hand, can request higher prices than usual if demand is increasing due to trade fairs or festivals.
In the meantime, small investors are also interested
The industry knows further incentives for investors: In order to reduce risks, it relies on operator contracts instead of its own real estate. Or the real estate developers rent the hotel back to a firm lease and continue. Tax design options create further profit potential.
They are increasingly awakening the interests of small investors, the stock exchange expert Antje Erhard from the ARD–Finance : “Demand has been increasing for a few years. Hotels are often split into partial ownership, so that investors can also participate here with a smaller budget.”
The Bettenburg return also seems convenient: “Investors do not have to worry about renting, after rent, maintenance. Some objects offer rental default insures, so that if there is no vacancy, a loss of rent does not threaten, at least for a certain time.”
Empty hotel buildings are difficult to change
Antje Erhard also points to risks: “Travel trends can change. There are fewer business travelers through home office and video conferences. In addition, small investors in particular have no influence on the microlage, i.e. the area of the hotel, the management and its qualities and the brand or brand awareness of the operator and its financial strength.”
The insolvency risk should not be underestimated, warns Erhard. This can mean a problem for cities: empty hotel buildings with bathrooms in every room are difficult to change.
Without hotels none Events?
“A hotel offer is important for a city that wants to find acceptance as a conference location, and an extensive tourist offer is little worth without accommodation nearby,” explains tourism specialist Ehlen. He reports on the situation in Worms, 50 kilometers south of Mainz, seat of his university and an example for many medium -sized cities in Germany.
The “Das Wormser” conference center could be attractive to trade fairs and conferences. “However, the selection of suitable accommodations is far too low than that it could be attractive for larger conferences.” But it was precisely these visits that provided more money in the city treasury and the regional economy.
Hotel settlements not necessarily housing competition
“So far, no solution has been found for the hotel in the immediate vicinity of the inner -city conference center for many years,” says Angela Zimmermann, spokeswoman for the city of Worms. In two places in the city area, however, there are interested parties for new hotel buildings: “They would be very welcome, especially from a tourist perspective, because tourism is now one of the most important economic factors in the city.”
The need for hotel settlements does not necessarily have to mean competition for housing construction, Zimmermann: “An investor even wants to combine both by wanting to add a new hotel to a new hotel.”
