Hotel plan

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Hotelplan Holding AG

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1935
Seat Opfikon , Switzerland
management Thomas Stirnimann ( CEO )
Fabrice Zumbrunnen ( Chairman of the Board of Directors )
Number of employees approx. 2100 (2020)
sales 1.452 billion CHF (2018)
Branch Tourism group
Website www.hotelplan.com

Hotelplan is a Swiss travel company . It was founded on April 29, 1935 as a cooperative and a subsidiary of the Federation of Migros Cooperatives and converted into a stock corporation on April 21, 1981 .

Companies

Hotelplan Holding AG is an international travel group with headquarters in Opfikon-Glattbrugg near Zurich . The company has been organized as a holding company since 2007; the individual tour operators form sister companies within the company. The group also owns the holiday home broker Interhome , and until October 2009 also the airline Belair .

Hotelplan Holding AG is the second largest Swiss tour operator in terms of the domestic market. In 2018, the company carried 1.816 million passengers, achieved sales of 1.452 billion Swiss francs and employed around 2,100 people. With Interhome and Inter Chalet , Hotelplan is also the largest multi-host provider on Airbnb for Swiss holiday apartments.

history

Beginning

In March 1935, the German travel professional Rudolf Nehring hit the Migros founder Gottlieb Duttweiler before, with vacation packages to tourism in Switzerland to revive. This was in an existential crisis due to a sharp drop in the number of guests and excessive prices. Duttweiler quickly decided to put the idea into practice and founded the Hotelplan cooperative on April 29, in which Migros and tourism companies were involved (the name is a creation of his colleague Elsa Gasser ). People from simple backgrounds should be able to afford a holiday for the first time with inexpensive all-inclusive offers (one week for 65 francs). In contrast to the totalitarian mass organizations Dopolavoro and Kraft durch Freude (which Duttweiler loathed), vacationers should be able to organize their leisure time individually within a certain region. In a few weeks, the manager Emil Rentsch built an organization. On 1 June, the first drove special train from Zurich to Lugano , the first international guests met two weeks later and other destinations were added in quick succession.

The Swiss Hotel Association and the Swiss Transport Authority rejected the cooperation offered by Duttweiler due to irreconcilable differences. On the other hand, he found people willing to cooperate with the Association of Travel Agencies and the Association of Swiss Transport Companies. Despite the concerns of their association, numerous hoteliers were prepared to offer their services much cheaper than usual. The discounter strategy and the advertising films shot by Josef Dahinden contributed significantly to the success; By the end of the year, more than 52,000 weekly packages had been sold, and many guests came from abroad. By 1939, over 800 hotels, railway companies and shipping companies had participated in the hotel plan. The Second World War suddenly interrupted the stormy development and Hotelplan temporarily shrank to a small travel agency for domestic travel. Duttweiler did not lay off the employees, but instead used them for some wartime economic functions such as Migros' rationing system .

expansion

Immediately after the end of the war, Hotelplan organized the first trips abroad, which led to Milan , Venice , Florence and the Riviera . Conversely, only British guests came to Switzerland in 1946, as Great Britain was the only European country at the time that made foreign currency available for foreign travel. Hotelplan opened its first subsidiary in Milan in 1947, followed by more in the Netherlands and France in 1948 and 1949 . In 1955, in cooperation with the Federation of Migros Cooperatives, the first holiday village, the Riviera Beach Club in Hyères, was opened . In 1958, Hotelplan began to travel to the Far East on a larger scale, and in 1959 the travel agency Esco-Reisen was taken over. With the takeover of Inghams Travel in 1962, the expansion to Great Britain began, which was to develop into the group's second mainstay. In 1977 Hotelplan had 72 offices and sales outlets worldwide.

Due to the saturation of the market and the tough competition in the European tour operator business, the Hotelplan cooperative decided to convert it into a public limited company, which was completed on April 21, 1981. In 1984 Hotelplan founded Horizonte Clubferien und Clubhotels AG, and in January 1985 the company welcomed its ten millionth customer. In 1989 the Interhome Group, the world's largest provider of holiday apartments and houses, was taken over, which means that the group now comprised 36 companies with over 140 branches in twelve countries. In 1990 Hotelplan achieved sales of more than one billion francs for the first time. By 1999 this rose to 1.94 billion.

Since 2000

The airline Belair was founded on November 3, 2001 because the then Balair was founded as a subsidiary of Swissair on October 2, 2001 to secure its own charter flight business . In the 2001 financial year, Hotelplan achieved a record turnover of 2.29 billion Swiss francs. At the end of 2001, Hotelplan moved to its new headquarters in Glattbrugg and gave up the decentralized administrative locations in the Zurich region, including the previous headquarters in Zurich. On January 1, 2002, the tour operator Ernst Marti AG was taken over and part of the newly founded Marti Reisebüro AG , in which Hotelplan Schweiz held around 70%. At the end of January 2004, Hotelplan launched the EASY! Einfach-Ferien.ch , which targets the low-price segment. In mid-2004, the Hotelplan subsidiary TPT Tourisme pour Tous SA , based in Lausanne, was merged into the parent company, but remained as a brand. On November 1st, Marti Reisebüro AG was taken over and merged with Hotelplan. With retroactive effect from November 1st, Esco-Reisen AG was merged into Hotelplan and retained as a brand.

In 2005 Hotelplan took over the majority of the shares in Travelwindow AG , which operates the online travel portal travel.ch , among other things . With the acquisition, Hotelplan expanded its position on the Swiss online travel market. The subsidiary Hotelplan Italy launched T-Club, a new brand name on the Italian market. In 2006 the subsidiary Hotelplan Holland with its 400 employees was sold to the Dutch Oad Group. Hotelplan launched the Globus Reisen brand with the Globus department store , a sister company . With the takeover of the Travelhouse Group, Hotelplan rose to become the largest tour operator in Switzerland and overtook Kuoni . In 2007 Hotelplan and Air Berlin entered into a strategic partnership, while Air Berlin acquired a 49 percent stake in Belair. In 2008 Hotelplan Schweiz AG and Travelhouse were renamed “M-Travel Switzerland” (MTCH AG). The providers Hotelplan, Migros Ferien, Denner Reisen, Globus Reisen, Travelhouse, Esco, Tourisme Pour Tous and First Business Travel are organized as individual brands by MTCH. In October 2009 Hotelplan sold its stake in Belair to Air Berlin.

In August 2011 it was announced that 27% of the shares of the holiday house party Inter Chalet holiday house be sold on November 1, 2011. Hotelplan and two years later, the remaining shares are to follow. In May 2012, Hotelplan sold its stake in the loss-making Russian tour operator Ascent Travel. On October 31, 2014 Hotelplan Suisse took the discount travel brand Denner Reisen off the market. However, Denner continues to be used as an important sales channel, for example with the publication of attractively priced hotel plan offers in the “Denner Week” brochure. On December 1, 2015, Hotelplan took over the soft adventure provider Explore Worldwide and the diving specialist Regaldive . On October 31, 2016, the travel agency Beo AG Thun was taken over and the Hotelplan Italia business unit was sold to the Italian tour operator Eden Viaggi at the same time . The online travel portal travel.ch was discontinued at the end of October 2017. In 2017, Hotelplan founded the Powder Finder platform for heliskiing offers . In 2019 Hotelplan took over the tour operator Vtours . As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic , Hotelplan Suisse has announced that the travel program abroad will be suspended until June 14, 2020.

Hotelplan Group company

  • Hotelplan Holding AG / Hotelplan Management AG
    • Hotelplan Suisse (MTCH AG)
      • Globe travel
      • Travelhouse
      • Tourisme Pour Tous
      • Hotel plan
      • Migros holidays
    • BTA First Travel AG
      • bta first
    • Finass
      • Finass Reisen AG
    • Hotelplan (UK Group) Ltd.
      • Inghams
      • Inntravel
      • esprit
      • Ski Total
      • Santa's Lapland
      • EXPLORE!
    • BF International Travel AG
      • bedfinder
    • Holiday Home Division

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hotelplan Holding AG. Commercial Register of the Canton of Zurich, 2019, accessed on October 14, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Annual Report 2017 (PDF, 3.4 MB) Hotelplan Holding AG, 2018, accessed on October 14, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c Annual Report 2018 (PDF, 3.7 MB) Hotelplan Holding AG, 2019, accessed on October 14, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Migros is a secret multi on Airbnb. Handelszeitung , October 11, 2017, accessed on November 11, 2017 .
  5. ^ Alfred A. Häsler : The Migros Adventure. The 60 year old idea . Ed .: Federation of Migros Cooperatives. Migros Presse, Zurich 1985, p. 80-82 .
  6. ^ Häsler: The Migros Adventure. The 60 year old idea. Pp. 82-84.
  7. ↑ Curt Riess : Gottlieb Duttweiler - a biography of Curt Riess . Europa Verlag, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-905811-32-2 , pp. 80-81 .
  8. ↑ History 1940–1949. Hotel plan, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  9. ↑ History 1950–1959. Hotel plan, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  10. ^ History 1960–1969. Hotel plan, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  11. ↑ History 1970–1979. Hotel plan, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Häsler: The Migros Adventure. P. 354.
  13. ↑ History 1980–1989. Hotel plan, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  14. ↑ History 1990–1999. Hotel plan, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  15. ↑ a b History 2000–2009. Hotel plan, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Hotelplan sells majority to airline Belair. Aargauer Zeitung , October 29, 2009, accessed on October 14, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Swiss buyers from Freiburg holiday home provider Inter Chalet. Badische Zeitung , August 16, 2011, accessed on August 16, 2011 .
  18. ↑ Hotelplan sells Russian company. Tages-Anzeiger , May 10, 2012, accessed May 10, 2012 .
  19. ↑ History 2010–2018. Hotel plan, accessed October 14, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Acquisitions & Disposals (2016 Annual Report). Federation of Migros Cooperatives, accessed on November 16, 2017 .
  21. ↑ Hotelplan Suisse: Tim Bachmann leaves, Travel.ch disappears. aboutTravel, September 21, 2017, accessed November 16, 2017 .
  22. ↑ Migros is getting into heli-skiing. Blick , November 21, 2017, accessed November 21, 2017 .
  23. ↑ Hotelplan Group takes over online provider vtours. travelnews.ch, October 7, 2019, accessed on October 7, 2019 .
  24. ↑ Tour operators cancel trips abroad until mid-June. In: aargauerzeitung.ch . CH Media , May 18, 2020, accessed on May 18, 2020 .