Vienna House sees room in Asia

“This will increase our total room count from 6,500 rooms this year to 9,900 rooms in the year 2022,” said Rupert Simoner, CEO of Vienna House Capital GmbH’s in an interview with The Nation recently. 
This will be the first business expansion of the Austrian hotel chain in Asia after Thai firm U City Plc took a 100 per cent stake in Vienna House Capital GmbH early this year. 
“Now we are an Austria-Thai based firm,” Simoner said. “The first hotel in Asia will surely be in Thailand. It may open next year or in the next two years when the project’s construction is completed,” he said.
U City Plc’s CEO Piyaporn Phanachet said the first project will locate in the Phayathai district in Bangkok. It is already under construction and will be completed in the year 2021.
Simoner said that their plans reach beyond Bangkok, with an interest in expanding Vienna House to other Thai tourist destinations, including Phuket and Chiang Mai.
Meanwhile, the company is also planning entry to others countries in the Middle East and Asia, including Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. In some cases, they project is a solo investment and in other cases, they would provide the management chain. 
The industry norm requires a decade from initial investment in a new hotel to the first return on investment. Vienna House is aiming for a return on investment over 10 per cent a year, Simoner said.
The concept of Vienna House is a casual hotel with more facilities than the guest expects and a new customer experience at each location, Simoner said.
“Crucial was our answer to the question of why we do what we do,” he said. “We strongly believe that nothing is more refined than the simple things in life and we want to do one thing above all: inspire our guests. This is the inspiration for how we see ourselves and how we act. It is about being a great host – about being your unconcealed self – without wearing a mask. We don’t get stuck in hundreds of standards.” 
Currently, Vienna House has two brands – Vienna House and Vienna House Easy. A staff of 2,400 oversees 34 hotels with 6,500 rooms in nine countries in Europe – Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, France, Russia, Romania, Slovakia, Belarus, and Austria. The group has an average occupancy rate of 66 per cent a year with up to 60 per cent of its customers comprising business and meeting, incentive tourism, conventions, exhibitions (the MICE market), with the remainder categorised as tourists. 
Vienna House brands operate in the “upscale design” market segment and include individual city and resort hotels that stand featuring a timeless design and a natural sense of class. The Vienna House Easy operations are the group’s smart-casual design hotels with a cool, fresh and easy-going style. 
To synergise the hospitality group, Vienna House will provide support to Absolute Hotel Services Co Ltd, a hospitality arm of U City Plc that manages a hotel chain under the brands U Hotel and Eastin in Bangkok and the Asia market. That chain is planning to expand its investment and brand in Europe, Simoner said.
“We will expand U Hotel and the Eastin chain in Europe in the next five years, with U Hotel focussed on the resort and spa hotel market and the Eastin brand on the city lifestyle.”
Having four brands with different characters is a challenge for our business expansion in Europe,” he said.
Absolute Hotel Services Co Ltd’s (AHS) CEO Jonathan Wigley said that Vienna House and AHS could create synergies that help expand both brands in Asia, Europe, Middle East, and the USA. Vienna House will operate the four brands – Vienna House, Vienna House Easy, U Hotel, and Eastin – in Europe through to the Middle East, while AHS would operate the four brands in Asia and Middle East countries.
AHS now operates 52 hotels comprising 11,412 keys in six countries, including Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Turkey, and Oman. 
“We target to achieve 20,000 keys in the year 2020,” Wigley said.