The corona crisis hit the hotel industry hard, and the Maritim chain has been forced to make emergency sales. Representatives of various hotel groups presented a catalog of demands to politicians.
Due to tight budgets in the Corona crisis, the Maritim hotel chain is forced to part with some of its locations. The company announced that it had to cope with a liquidity loss of 140 million euros during pandemic times. “Although we had high liquidity reserves before the pandemic, we now have to secure our survival through emergency hotel sales,” said the owner of the family business, Monika Gommolla. Maritim, with around 5,000 employees worldwide, has 40 hotels, 29 of them in Germany with 3,000 employees.
“It can not go on like this”
“The Maritim Hotel Group has been hit extremely hard by the pandemic,” said Gommolla. “The first lockdown already resulted in a loss of sales of almost 90 percent last year.” After a short recovery phase in the summer, since November 2020 there has been a 90 percent drop in sales at almost all Maritim hotel locations due to the bans on accommodation for tourist guests. State aid almost failed to materialize, and only two million euros have been paid out so far. “The situation for the hotel industry is very serious, it cannot go on like this,” complains Gommolla. State aid must also be paid out as quickly as possible for larger companies in the industry and owner-managed hotel groups such as Maritim. The hotel chain Centro, which in 2019 still had 60 hotels with 1200 employees, had to sell 13 locations last year.
“Bridging aids not sufficient”
Dirk Iserlohe, CEO of the financial holding company Honestis AG, emphasized that time was of the essence. The AG is the parent company of the Dorint hotel chain, whose supervisory board chairman Iserlohe is also. At a press conference in Cologne with nine hotel chains on the state of the industry in Germany, he presented a statement to politicians on Thursday. The main complaint is that the current financial support from politicians is inadequate. The state aid limits, which are twelve million euros, are nowhere near enough, according to Iserlohe. In 2020 alone, the uncovered loss was 30 million euros.
“No limitation of the reimbursement obligation”
For GSH Hotels, Marco El Manchi explained that sales fell by 60 percent in the past year. Most colleagues were still waiting for government grants, which were not enough anyway, says El Manchi. The Lindner hotel chain reported a drop in sales from 200 to 45 million euros. Managing director Otto Lindner, who is also Vice President of the Dehoga branch association, spoke of a “terrible situation”. The hotel operators’ equity reserves have been used up. “We are not the driver of the pandemic, so we are entitled to compensation.” The deputy chairman of the FDP, Wolfgang Kubicki, also took part in the press conference: “It’s about the survival of an entire industry. No area is more affected.” Therefore, there should be no limit to the obligation to reimburse costs.
Three quarters fewer overnight stays
The current data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on overnight stays also shows how deep the crisis is in this country: of the 51,000 accommodation establishments recorded in Germany, only 29,300 were open in February. In February 2021, there were 7.2 million overnight stays by domestic and foreign guests in the accommodation establishments in Germany. That is 76 percent fewer overnight stays than in the corresponding month of the previous year.
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