Hotel ship
A hotel ship is a passenger ship that temporarily or permanently takes on the function of a hotel , whereby the focus is on overnight stays at a fixed location. While a hotel ship but mostly during the day goes to the next attraction, is in a Botel hotel function in the foreground and it is firmly moored at the pier.
Hotel ship
River cruise ships are mainly used as hotel ships. For this purpose, the passenger cabins are not offered for a cruise, but as a hotel room at a fixed location. In this way, a larger overnight accommodation capacity can be offered on site at short notice and without structural effort. Hotel ships offer a flexible addition to the existing range of hotels on land, particularly if capacity bottlenecks are expected during trade fairs or major events. In Germany, for example, hotel ships are offered for trade fairs in Frankfurt am Main , Cologne , Düsseldorf , Nuremberg and Hanover . The jetties are mostly in a central location in the city centers. During a large trade fair such as Drupa or Medica in Düsseldorf, up to 40 ships are used to accommodate trade fair guests.
In contrast to a so-called botel, in which a boat is firmly anchored in one place and is used permanently as a hotel, hotel ships are only temporarily in one place. This type of use of river cruise ships is particularly interesting for ship owners and shipping companies because they cannot change to warmer sailing areas with the seasons like ocean cruise ships. In this way, better utilization can be achieved outside the cruise season.
Most hotel ships are designed for cruises and therefore for a longer stay on board. They are offered in different categories and have 50–100 cabins. Earlier hotel ships tended to have a simpler equipment, but today they usually offer a 4 to 5 star standard. Nowadays this standard includes cabins with shower, toilet, air conditioning, telephone and television. In addition, bars, restaurants and lounges are available to guests on board, and in some of the upscale categories there are also libraries or fitness areas with whirlpool and sauna.
One of the main destinations for river cruises in Europe are the rivers Rhine , Main , Danube and Elbe . Since many cities are located directly on the water, this area is also interesting for hotel ships as a place of work. The jetties are mostly in a central location in the inner cities, for example directly on the banks of the old town in Cologne , on Burgplatz in Düsseldorf or on Holbeinsteg and the Nizza shipyard in Frankfurt am Main. Via the network of inland waterways , flexible and needs-based scheduling of the hotel ships is possible without long transfers.
Botel
The botel is a ship hotel , the term is a suitcase word from boat and hotel . In general, however, in contrast to the hotel ship, it describes a floating hotel with a fixed berth. This type of guest accommodation is particularly common in water-rich areas. Unlike on a hotel, cruise or river ship, the bedrooms are not referred to as “cabins”, but rather as “rooms”, as in hotels. Botels are either ships built for this purpose, like the Amstel Botel , or converted old passenger ships. Botels often have a permanent mooring at the pier that is used seasonally or year-round by the shipping company.
They offer a level of comfort similar to that of a hotel. Compared to hotels on land, however, botels often only have a limited range of services, for example only overnight stays with breakfast are possible. The rooms are partly air-conditioned and have TV, telephone and internet connection. Energy is supplied via permanently installed shore connections.
Popular areas for botels include Amsterdam , Bratislava , Budapest , Prague and Stockholm (Schiff Mälardrottningen ).
Use of other ships as a hotel ship
In the case of hotel ships, it is mainly a temporary interim use of river cruise ships. Museum ships, former ferries, school ships or so-called event ships are less frequently converted into hotel ships and used in large port cities.
Examples of Hamburg are the former overseas freighter Cap San Diego in the port of Hamburg , which is the largest museum ship and still sails under its own power, and the former port ferry Grosser Michel , with which regular trips are made as a hotel ship. What both have in common is the small number of cabins compared to cruise ships.
In Bremen, the hotel ship Perle is operated on the Schlachte and the former training ship Deutschland is operated in the Lesum estuary in the Bremen district of Vegesack .
In 1947 the Bark Seute Deern came to Hamburg as a hotel and restaurant ship. Due to economic difficulties it was sold to Holland and served ten years as Pieter A. Koerts in her hometown Delfzijl as a floating youth hostel. In 1964 the port city of Emden became the new home port under the previous name Seute Deern . After being used for a short time as a restaurant, it moved to its current berth in the old port of Bremerhaven in 1966 and is used as a restaurant in the museum harbor.
In Rostock, the former Georg Büchner was operated as a hotel and training ship, initially as a boarding school in the 1990s and, after the turn of the millennium, as a youth hostel and hotel ship by the Friends of Traditionsschiff until 2012 (see also: Traditionsschiff Dresden ).
Beginnings and development
The beginnings of hotel ships in Germany go back to the 1970s. During the international trade fairs, it was often difficult to find high-quality accommodation in a good location due to bottlenecks in the hotel market. So the idea arose in Frankfurt of anchoring a river cruise ship on the banks of the Main during the International Textile Fair and thus increasing the bed capacity in the middle of the city. To this day (as of 2016), the port company of the City of Frankfurt am Main offers berths for hotel ships at the Nizza shipyard ( ports in Frankfurt am Main ).
River cruises became a growing market in the tourism business in Europe in the 2000s. After the completion of the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the expansion of the EU , the possibilities for inland shipping and thus also for shipping tourism have increased. The comfort of travel made river cruises more and more popular, so that they now compete with the multi-day bus trips through Europe. The number of ships consequently increased in the 2000s. This also increased the availability of cruise ships for use as hotel ships.
Another reason for the increasing use of hotel ships is the large peaks in demand for hotel stays in trade fair cities. The large price surcharges of the local hotels during trade fair events have already led to losses and even to the migration of entire trade fairs. Many visitors stayed away or only came for a day trip, benefiting from cheap transport connections via low-cost airlines or ICE train connections. Hotel ships compensate for these temporary peaks and thus, despite criticism from local hotels, contribute to the attractiveness and competitiveness of trade fair locations.
Hotel ship market
Hotel ships act as an important corrective in the hotel market. The market is too inelastic to react to very high demand, for example at trade fairs. Additional hotel capacities through the construction of further hotels are not feasible in the short term and are not always desirable, as they lead to overcapacities in times of low demand outside the trade fair season. The use of hotel ships reflects this situation and enables a needs-based balance of supply and demand.
Hotel ships are usually marketed by charter agencies who use the capacities of shipping companies, such as Viking River Cruises from Switzerland, or Partikulate, i.e. independent ship owners. The two market leaders in Germany are Crossgates and Regis Hotelschiff GmbH. Your job is to charter the ships and make them available in the cities booked and to ensure that the agreed standards remain constant. The charterers maintain connections to the exhibition companies and tourist associations in the cities that can be reached in order to provide hotel ships on request. The hotel ships are seen as a way of accommodating more trade fair guests in the city instead of in the surrounding area. The guests consist of both individual and corporate customers who book their hotel ship accommodation mostly through specialized tour operators , but also directly with the local tourism associations or directly on the hotel ship.
In 2007, the hotel ships in Germany brought a total of over 100,000 beds onto the market during the six-month season and generated sales of around 10 million euros. This means that they only represent a small proportion of the total hotel capacity in Germany. Berlin alone, for example, has a daily capacity of 97,441 beds (as of December 2008).
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b 5000 beds on hotel ships: Full house in Düsseldorf ( Memento from April 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Rheinische Post , May 26, 2008.
- ↑ a b Port of Frankfurt ( Memento of the original from January 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Press Plan - Exhibition and Business Travel. November 27, 2010, archived from the original on November 27, 2010 ; Retrieved November 17, 2016 .
- ↑ fairtours Business Express - trade fair service. In: www.fairtours.com. Retrieved November 17, 2016 .
- ^ Düsseldorf Marketing and Tourism GmbH
- ↑ Frankfurt am Main - hotel reservation + information. In: wayback.archive.org. Archived from the original on March 11, 2010 ; Retrieved November 17, 2016 .
- ↑ Welcome - The hotel ship in Bremen - Hotel ship Perle Bremen. In: www.hotelschiff-perle-bremen.de. Retrieved November 17, 2016 .
- ↑ Crossgates ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 23 kB)
- ↑ Berlin - annual statistics 2008 - visitBerlin.de. (PDF) (No longer available online.) In: www.visitberlin.de. Archived from the original on November 18, 2016 ; Retrieved November 17, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
