Historic Hotels of Europe at the cross-border meeting in Switzerland
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St. Moritz (February 25, 2011). The history of the hotels, the hospitality and the personalities of the hosts form the common denominator for the colourful hotel crowd from all of Europe that meets for the first time from the 27th to the 29th of March, 2011 in Saint Moritz, Switzerland. "Historic Hotels of Europe" gather for the first time at an international meeting. Since 1997, they have marketed themselves under this name (HHE). hospitalityInside.com is a media partner for this premiere.
"As of today, we have 75 participants including the speakers and employees of the member''s organisations," says Hanne Mostecky, Director of Operations & Co-ordination for HHE, from the seat of the counted 700-member cooperation in Paris. There will be representatives present from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Great Britain and Wales, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Portugal and Greece.
Every consortium resembles a unique specimen, describing the national organisations, Martin Kuettel of the Katag Treuhand AG in Kriens near Lucerne. The former hotelier and advisor today was the initiator of the "Swiss Historic Hotels" in 2004 - because he was in search of a suitable marketing collaboration at that time for the Hotel Paxmontana in the canton Obwalden managed by him. "However, I did not find them," he regrets. He met a colleague from Norway under the umbrella of the "Historic Hotels of Norway". And so they started to investigate and to initiate…
Together with Christof Juen, the CEO of the Swiss industry association, hotelleriesuisse, and Roland Flueckiger, monument conservationist in the canton Bern, who spun the "historical" thought further to what led to the foundation of the Swiss consortium that initially survived on state conveyed funding.
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The standards of the Swiss Historic Hotels even coincide with those of the hotelleriesuisse, reports Kuettel, so that today, the consortium may even check the historical hotels in Switzerland by order of the association.
Up to now, the European consortium existed through an exchange of ideas amongst themselves and the common website www.historichotelsofeurope.com which is currently undergoing an update and face-lift in the background.
Now, in addition, the revised version of the iPhone application is also ready for download at the Apple Store. The new and improved version contains additional, interesting features like the phone call function to get directly in touch with the hotel of choice, further special offers and integration of the HHE-"cultural routes". Up to now, these cultural routes have been an important marketing factor (see website).
The national organisations are very different in size: Some like Greece count less than 20 operators; about 100 properties contribute to others such as France. The goal remains to grow further on a broad front. On this occasion, the younger members from the Eastern European countries are placed in the forefront: There is an almost infinite potential for the historical hotels that are searching everywhere for marketing.
"Heritage," adds Martin Kuettel, "has become a global theme." Even big chains take up this subject line – which is not surprising. In the age of high tech, high touch becomes increasingly more important. / kn
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