Czech hotel chain Orea Hotels & Resorts plans to double the number of hotel rooms within two years. It now has 2,000. “By the end of next year, we would like to have up to 30 hotels in our network,” says CEO Gorjan Lazarov.
A chance for reform of the hotel market – this is how the domestic hotel chain Orea sees the current energy crisis and the economic problems of many tourism entrepreneurs. According to its CEO, Gorjan Lazarov, the Czech Republic could see what happened forty years ago in the USA.
“The Czech hotel market is now very fragmented. I think the crisis may be an opportunity for a lot of independent hoteliers who are struggling today. So that what happened in America in the 1980s, for example, would happen in the Czech Republic. years, when Mariottas, Hiltons started to emerge, and to create such a hotel platform,” says the head of Orea in Agenda SZ Byznys.
What they are interested in now are mainly operational opportunities, not investments in other properties.
Orea Hotels has not escaped a sharp increase in energy prices either. This year’s increase in costs compared to 2019 has been estimated at roughly CZK 50 million, and there is no prospect of specific assistance from the government.
They themselves, like many other companies, have fixed energy prices only until the end of this year and are waiting to conclude new contracts. “It took us a while to get a draft of the contract (draft, working version – ed.), but it hasn’t been signed yet.”
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