When was the last time you stayed in a hotel?
To me – honestly – it seems like a lifetime ago.
To keep the pandemic at bay, the German government strongly discourages tourism
and hotels are actually not allowed to host leisure travelers at this point in time.
That's — of course — a huge blow to the industry but a bunch of establishments around Berlin
have decided to make the most of a difficult situation.
And today I want to pay them a visit.
First stop: Amstel House.
A popular hostel in the district of Moabit.
You faced this crisis in a pretty innovative way.
Talk me through the model that you implemented when corona hit.
We turned it into the idea that we are going
to offer our rooms — which are still empty — for students.
Students coming to Berlin would like to start their studies for the winter.
So we developed this program to students rooms stay and after a while more and more people
even working professionals were asking if they could rent rooms as well for a certain
time to get orientated in the city, to have some time to look for an own flat.
And so we said: Why not?
And then we increased the number of people living here on that basis up to almost our
maximum which would be 50 rooms.
This is the communal kitchen.
Inside the kitchen while preparing the food there's a maximum of five persons allowed
here and you have to wear a mask all the time.
This is one of my tasks to take care of that.
As the daddy of the house.
Natalia, you live in a hostel.
Did you ever think that would happen?
No, not at all.
It's really weird.
I mean, it was weird at first.
But now it feels really like home.
And all the people that are living here, are also staying for a while.
So we know each other, it's pretty friendly, we sometimes eat together.
So, I mean it's weird, I never thought I would do it — but here I am.
What's special or odd maybe about living in a hostel that is also quite deserted,
there is 50 people max, usually there is room for 300 plus people?
The weirdest thing is that you live alone, I mean in your room,
but at the same time you don't.
You live with other people that you see all the time, but although it's weird.
I really like it, I can have my privacy.
But not only students have found a temporary home here.
Hi! How would you describe living here, 'cause it's a rather unusual setting, isn't it?
Yes, but right now I'm looking for a job,
so I want something in budget.
So I looked for the hostels within budget and clean stuff:
washroom, kitchen — everything was nice. So I feel comfortable to stay in this hostel.
This is of course only an emergency measure; kind of the emergency break you're pulling.
Tell me, how devastating has the financial impact of this crisis been on your business?
My expectation is to survive until September 2021.
I know this is a quite comfortable aim in comparison to other hostel owners for example.
But one has to say that taking out the loan
will throw me back seven years on a financial basis.
So I have to work another seven years
to get to the same point as we had been in end of 2019.
Other hotels in Berlin have suspended operations entirely.
To them staying open just to host a handful of business travelers just doesn't pay off.
One of them is the Palace Hotel.
But don't think they're just sitting around waiting for better times.
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what I call
an excellent bathroom.
I may have to stay here — forever.
Anything but a standstill!
Fingers crossed their efforts will pay-off!
I'll stick around the area for a little while.
Because another hotel in the area has openeed its doors to people who have to work remotely.
Why did you decide to open your doors to people who want or who need to work remotely?
That is for us a new opportunity to welcome guests,
a nice add-on at the moment to have some guests here and to get some revenue.
How successful has this new business model, so to say, been for you?
And what's the feedback you've gotten so far?
We get some regular guests. They come one day or two days a week
or there's someone who books the offers at the hotel for one week for example.
I’m off to meet one of the regulars.
I wonder why he’s choosing to work from here.
Hi, are you Mark? — I am indeed.
I'm Nicole, nice to meet you!
Can I come in?
Nice to meet you, please!
I‘m already inside.
You're at work? — That's right.
You are not working from home, you're working from hotel.
How is that and why is that?
So it works out very well for me, because first of all physically,
— it's only a 10 to 15-minute ride through the Tiergarten for me, from where I live.
And yes, the hotel is a bit quieter than usual but actually that's why I'm here.
Because at home at the moment with my wife being a teacher doing home schooling,
doing her online teaching I have to be really quite there.
Secondly my daughter is also doing her online schooling at home.
So first of all there are these demands on the internet and secondly there is just no space for me there
than to be the third person trying to work away.
So that's why I come here. And I found the offer that they have here more than fair.
For many hotels business travelers are, well,
a huge part of business.
Retreats, workshops and conferences usually bring in a lot of guests —
unless, of course, a pandemic hits.
The solution are hybrid events.
But what exactly are those?
Here at the Sheraton Grand Hotel Esplanade, I'll find out.
The word hybrid means either joining the meeting
or the conference virtually by streaming or digitally
or being face to face in the room basically as an attendant.
What kind of events are suitable to be carried out in this hybrid fashion?
Pretty much everything, you know, to tell you the truth.
I mean, here in the hotel we've got two studios.
We are currently in Studio 2, as we call it.
This is our larger studio with quite a few square meters.
This will be probably more ideally located for larger hybrid events.
It depends on the local rules and regulations how many people are allowed into the room physically.
At the moment in Berlin are only allowed 20 people.
So you always have to subtract one or two people for the cameramen or the guest speakers,
whoever speaking on the stage or whatever you want to present.
But this is definitely — as I said — you're reaching many people, there's no limit because
through the streaming you can have 200, 10thousand attendees worldwide basically.
The hotel has even set up a full-blown TV studio.
Here we will be talking more about a virtual, digital meeting where you can communicate
with a few people, a few hundred, a few thousands et cetera,
small and exclusive per se at least in this setting.
This is by far the weirdest pool I've ever seen.
We are standing in our swimming pool — thankfully with no water,
but this is our interpreter translation hub.
We've got 12 booths here in the swimming pool and this is really unique for the hotel with
your hybrid or your virtual event.
Currently with the setting with the 12 booths we can do up to eight languages.
Do you think this will remain even after Covid is gone?
Definitely!
It is a sign of the future.
It's going to be sustainable.
The question is: How many attendees can I reach?
And this will definitely extend after Covid into the next few years, I'm convinced.
But really if you're talking about hotels in Berlin
the first place that comes to mind is the legendary Adlon.
I wonder how they are dealing with the shutdown.
This is where Berlin's most high-profile guests usually check-in.
In the midst of this huge crisis you came up with a project so to say to thank the healthcare
workers, the heroes of the pandemic. Tell me more about that!
We came up with this '1000 nights'
for one year to come and enjoy a night at the Adlon,
also enjoy the breakfast and at that point think about nothing else than rather enjoy.
Have thousand healthcare workers already stayed here?
Not yet, because the time when it was said, you know, tourists are not allowed to stay over.
But it's ongoing. In a very few days 500, 600 were booked immediately.
And then it went up actually, seven, eight, nine and up to thousand.
And now we will see and hope to welcome them sooner than later.
Berlin Fashion Week is always a huge event for the entire city, for the hotels in the city.
This year it went virtual, like so many other things.
But you didn't want to miss out on the action, did you?
Not at all.
It was really fantastic that this fashion show during actually the normal
Berlin Fashion Week happened in a virtual manner.
More than five years actually we work very trustful with the partnership with Anja Gockel
and her team together.
And therefore we thought: Let's become creative actually and go this way.
Anja Gockel is a German "Fair Fashion" Designer.
The show has a theme which is really important to me.
It's called "Embraceland".
That means to me we: we can't hug each other,
therefore we need to take awareness for each other, we take each other in our hearts
even though we can't embrace each other.
We are really careful about everything.
Every person you see around here, every model, every dancer,
everyone literally is tested each day.
But I do think it's important to remember that all of this inventiveness is really just
part of this sector's struggle to stay alive during the crisis.
So let's all work together to defeat the virus.
Wear a mask!
Wash your hands and stay at home so that we can all stay 'elsewhere' soon.