2023-12-26 04:12:51
Saving is the order of the day in tourism. “The city is full and the hotels are empty,” said the head of the Vienna boutique hotel Stadthalle, Michaela Reitterer, in an interview with the APA. “For the number of tourists in the city, the hotels are not very booked,” explained the hotelier. On Advent weekends and public holidays, many day tourists, especially from Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia, arrived by bus. However, business is booming on New Year’s Eve.
“We’re full of that,” said the industry expert, who is also honorary president of the Austrian Hotel Association. In the period before and around Christmas her house was “not packed, but it was well booked”. “We noticed the Corona wave very strongly in terms of cancellations,” reported Reitterer, looking back on the Advent season. “The wave of cancellations was massive.” An unexpected number of hotel vouchers went away.
With her 80-room house in a modest location near the Westbahnhof, the entrepreneur has been successfully occupying a market niche for years by practicing sustainability – now it corresponds to the spirit of the times and is well received by influencers. “We were the first city hotel in the world to be a passive house – with a zero energy balance,” she proudly announced. Delegations from all over the world – Korea, Northern Europe, Russia, Japan, etc. – came and admired the house.
The busy tourism specialist was initially ahead of her time with the concept, at least in the industry. Their innovative ideas in this direction initially overwhelmed donors and authorities alike. “When I applied to the bank to finance this passive house in 2008, the risk manager said: ‘You don’t seriously believe that more guests will come because of the green fluff,'” the hotel owner recalled. The official approvals were also not easy to obtain. An official brushed her off with the words “Ms. Reitterer, I’m retiring in three months and I’m certainly not going to deal with any new technology.” “I started building it in 2009.”
“I thought, is there any other way to build a house other than having it generate its own energy,” reported Reitterer. Your hotel consists of the main building, which is heated with district heating, and the completely newly built neighboring building in passive construction. The hotelier installed her first solar system on the roof of the first building in 2001, right after she bought the hotel from her parents. They in turn acquired it in 1983.
But Reitterer is also clearly feeling the enormous increase in energy costs. In 2023, these would suddenly have tripled from 2 to 6 percent of sales. This year they also had personnel costs that were 30 percent higher than before the pandemic in 2019. The entire industry’s room prices increased by 10 to 15 percent last year.
When renewing the windows and the facade, the then new hotel owner had the existing ivy and wild vine draped on the scaffolding during the work so that the plants could later be reattached to the house walls. “Only a woman can be that stupid,” she heard back then. “Today you would get a ‘shitstorm’ for such statements.”
“And I collected rainwater to flush the toilet – of course that was nonsense because the rainwater here in the city is too dirty – it looks like someone didn’t let it down.” She later took up the idea again. “With the cisterns I now collect the well water in the passive house for the water heat pump and use it to flush the toilet – that’s clean.”
The hotel manager built a garden house between the main buildings, the roof of which is covered in lavender and wild roses and is home to six bee colonies.
Reitterer was already living “Corporate Social Responsibility” before she even knew the term. “CSR is nothing more than running a company with common sense – and with heart,” says the passionate hotel manager. “And it’s logical that you look after your people and don’t waste money and save electricity.”
She doesn’t know about the shortage of skilled workers that is complained about everywhere. “We have more applications than we need workers.” She has now gotten an employee who has studied sustainability.
Since 2018, Reitterer has been cooperating with the socio-economic association Gabarage, which helps to bring people under strain back into the job market. This is a project by two women – one of whom is the managing director of the Anton Proksch Institute. The concept behind it: upcycling design – old objects, for example from the flea market, are processed into new, useful products such as lights or furniture. Can also be seen in Reitterer’s Hotel.
(The interview was conducted by Birgit Kremser/APA)
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