Railway hotel

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Midland Hotel, St Pancras Railway Station ( London )
Château Frontenac , a Québec landmark

As a railway hotel , the 20th in the 19th and early century are of private railway companies built, now often under monument protection standing, but also partly reclassified or referred to an uncertain future sighted luxurious large hotels.

With the development of the railroad as a fast, high-capacity passenger transport system, rail -based tourism also developed in the 19th century , although initially mainly that of the upper classes of the population. The private railway lines attempted to respond to this segment of rail travelers by building palatial luxury hotels in large cities and in attractive scenic locations. An early example of such a palace hotel linked to railroad construction is the former Midland Grand Hotel by architect Sir George Gilbert Scott , which was built by the Midland Railway at St Pancras station in Londonwas built. At the turn of the century, the “ Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits ”, the international sleeping car company, was also active with a subsidiary in the construction of luxury hotels at the destinations of their luxury trains. She owned the Hotel Pera Palas in Istanbul and the Grand Hotel des Wagons-Lits in Beijing .

In some cases, the construction of hotels along the newly built railway lines also resulted in the first tourist development of entire tourist regions, for example the east coast of Florida by Henry Morrison Flagler and his Florida East Coast Railway ( FEC Hotel ) or by Henry Bradley Plant , whose railway company covers the west coast Florida's touristically developed.

Among other things, the chain of railway hotels of the Canadian Pacific Railway , usually known as "châteaus", is famous , for example the Château Frontenac in Québec or the Banff Springs Hotel in the Rocky Mountains . The Austrian Southern Railway Company built a number of railway hotels, the empty today standing Südbahnhotel am Semmering and the Grand Hotel Dobbiaco to Hotel City of Abbazia (today Opatija ) on the Dalmatian coast near Rijeka .

As early as the 1930s, the structural changes in transport (the advance of private transport and aviation in the 20th century) meant that a number of railway hotels had to be closed or devoted to purposes other than tourist accommodation. This applied, for example, to the hotels in St. Augustine or Tampa , Florida, which were converted into educational institutions. In the last few decades, the old railway hotels have received some nostalgic appreciation, but their economic viability remains uncertain.

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