Our industry celebrates diversity – but demands consistent quality.

HAMBURG
Since it opened in 1909, the
grand hotel on Hamburg’s
Aussenalster lake featuring
225 bedrooms and suites
has numbered among the
top hostelries in town. The
Hotel Atlantic Kempinski
in Hamburg is now being
comprehensively modernised
at a cost of EUR 25 million.
Overall refurbishment
of the first 140 guestrooms
and suites in the traditionsteeped
property began at
the end of January. By April
2011 all the rooms will have
been completely redesigned
to relaunch with an average
size of more than 40 square
metres.
The beginning of building
work puts an end to a trend
that tainted the reputation of
the “white palace on the Al-
hundred metres from the
central station and Jungfernstieg,
Europe’s biggest innercity
construction project –
HafenCity – is rising on the
former site of the free port.
The whole project is scheduled
for completion by 2025
at the latest, with a good third
of the area already devel-
Heads on beds
ster”. In 2006 the hotel lost
its Five-Star Superior classification
and was subsequently
ejected from the Leading
Hotels of the World marketing
association to which it
had belonged for 17 years.
This was the result of years
of foot-dragging on investment,
evident chiefly in the
hotel rooms. Even so, the Atlantic
will not lose its most
faithful patron. Udo Lindenberg,
Germany’s most famous
rock star, has resided
in the hotel for around twenty
years, painting his muchregarded
“Likörelle” (“liqueurelles”
using liqueur
tints) in the loft studio and
gracing the bar with his presence.
“Even if things get tougher
still, I’m a true Atlantican and
oped. Already, the building
site elevated to the status of
a new district is a gigantic
promise, with more than
EUR six billion budgeted for
the 155 hectares, which will
provide homes for around
12,000 people and places of
work for more than 40,000.
Experiments of this kind have
will stay that way,” he pronounced
in Germany’s biggest
tabloid. www.kempinski.com/de/hamburg
In the heart of Hamburg,
right on the Binnenalster
lake, the Fairmont Hotel
Vier Jahreszeiten has welcomed
guests from all over
the world for more than 110
years. High society worldwide
has already lodged
there: Sophia Loren, shipping
magnate Onassis, and
the Shah of Persia. Thomas
Mann was another frequent
patron, which is why one of
the suites in the historic hostelry
has been named for the
author. A photograph of him
hangs in the lobby and books
such as The Magic Mountain
await the reader.
In 2008 all 156 guestrooms
and suites in the hotel were
refurbished, the Saudi prince
often failed elsewhere in the
world. London attempted
something similar in the
1980s on the Thames and
was initially spectacularly unsuccessful.
In Margaret
Thatcher’s Britain investors
were given free rein in the
Docklands. In search of a fast
buck they enveloped the dis-
Al Waleed bin Talal having
taken over the Canadian Fairmont
Group in 2007 together
with the investment firm
Colony Capital and merged it
with the Raffles Group that
he already owned. Then in
April the name Raffles was
replaced by Fairmont.
www.fairmont.com/
hamburg
In 2006 founder Eugen Block
invested EUR 100 million on
extending his five-star hotel
Elysée and turning it into the
Grand Elysée with 494
rooms and 17 suites. In 24
light and airy conference and
function rooms the hotel on
Hamburg’s Rothenbaumchaussee
makes a perfect
setting for meetings – ranging
from discussions in small
groups through exclusive
events of a gala nature to bigticket
conferences. The
trict in soulless office buildings,
leaving transport connections
and affordable
housing in short supply.
Hamburg is looking to learn
from this, with plans to double
the number of inhabitants
in the city centre; offices, museums
and shops are to be
built and new residential ar-