I will note two observations (I live in Germany).
This deal for the hotels? No connection to Merkel or the German federal gov’t. Since day one....the federal gov’t out of Berlin has simply mandated that states and cities run the refugee program. The only federal involvement is deciding the percentage that each German state gets, approval or disapproval of refugees, and handing money to that state to run the shelter/integration program. Berlin, the city....did the hotel deal themselves. They expect to be paid....Euro for Euro...for all costs.
As for this 22-hotel chain in Berlin...around three of the hotels are two-star operations with significant count of rooms. I checked pricing for the two-star operation....standard pricing right now if 44 Euro a night, and if you browsed for specials...you could probably get the room for 35 Euro (extremely cheap). My guess is that the bulk of all these rooms offered will be from the two-star hotels of this chain. I also suspect that there is a option written into this contract that if ‘damage’ is done on the hotel...the city has to buy the hotel.
Personally, I can’t imagine any hotel chain wanting to get into this and have tripadviser comments that this hotel or that hotel is a refugee hotel. It simply doesn’t make sense....unless the deal was about dumping a poor group of performing hotels over to a city in some underhanded deal and forcing the federal gov’t to pay for this later.
I should note that over in the Pfalz....last year they were discussing the idea of renting a Rhine River cruise boat to house 500 refugees. That never took off because the public just started laughing over the idea of a cruise boat being used.
Good post!
Why would a hotel refuse this guaranteed source of income? If I had the federal government come and tell me they will buy every item I produce (in this case hotel rooms) I would do it. Why bother with customers when you don’t have to do anything.
The real fun will be when the ‘migrants’ trash the place and start complaining that the rooms aren’t to their liking.
I think the Bavarians got it right. Muslims out! Go to Berlin! Now where are the Saxons, Prussians and Bohemians in this?