VCH - Association of Christian Hotels
The hotel group VCH - Association of Christian Hotels is a non-profit organization that was founded in Bern in 1895 and has been based in Interlaken , Canton of Bern , Switzerland , since 2018 . Neighboring associations founded later can now be found in many European countries, such as Germany , Austria , Italy , Denmark , Sweden , Norway and Finland .
Sponsorships are each works from the Free Church, Evangelical Reformed and Catholic environment or independent houses with entrepreneurs or managers associated with the aforementioned churches. More than 330 hotels are loosely connected under the umbrella of the VCH, 37 of which are in the founding country of Switzerland, and the trend is slightly downwards.
history
The VCH is one of the oldest hotel chains in the world. The VCH dates back to 1895, when 20 heads of hostels and hospices in the Swiss capital Bern approved the draft statutes and founded the Swiss Association of Christian Hostels.
The guest houses of these men had been built since the 1860s out of necessity to provide wandering craftspeople with suitable accommodation and to offer serious alternatives to the many problematic inns of this time (consumption of spirits, gambling, dangers for women traveling alone). In 1896, VCH President C. Hahn wrote from Vevey: "Hospices and hostels, run in a Christian spirit, appear all the more necessary as the spirit of materialism and unbelief pervades all social circles." In 1904, when the "Association of Christian Hospices" (today VCH Hotels Germany ) was founded, the first sister association abroad was established in Germany. Other associations in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Italy and England followed over the decades.
In 1954, the topic of continuing education at VCH became so important that a second leaders' meeting was introduced in late autumn. The increase to 44 member houses in Switzerland was mainly attributed to this symposium. In 1995 the association celebrated its centenary and gave away 100 free vacation weeks for disadvantaged people on this occasion.
In 2007, the VCH was again in a quantitative and qualitative growth phase and reached a new record high of 8.4% with over 730,000 overnight stays and a turnover of around 54 million euros in Switzerland alone.
In 2018, 37 hotels with around 1,700 rooms and 3,300 beds belonged to the VCH. The total number of overnight stays in hotels was 551,000, which corresponds to an average bed occupancy of 46%. With around 850 employees, the company achieved sales of CHF 76.5 million.
Locations
In 2013, over 311 hotels worldwide were connected to the VCH. In Switzerland he had 2,325 rooms and 4,083 beds. In Germany, the VCH is represented by 63 hotels, many of which are in cities, eight in and around Berlin and three in Hamburg. In Scandinavia the VCH has over 130 hotels and guesthouses, in Austria there are 13 hotels and in Italy 11 Waldensian guest houses , so-called foresteries , by the sea, in cities and in the mountains. There are also associated individual hotels in other European countries, Brazil and Thailand.
organization
VCH is organized in the legal form of an association in accordance with Art. 60 ff. Of the Swiss Civil Code . “VCH” and the English term “ACH” are registered trademarks. The organs are the general assembly of the members as well as the board of directors and the presidium of seven managers of the member hotels. The contributions of the members serve to fulfill the statutory duties and to cover the costs of the VCH office. Falk Pfleiderer was the managing director until 2014, then Cornelia Flückiger-Bührer and from autumn 2018 Gabriela Roth.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.vch.ch/vch/ueber-uns
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ https://www.vch.ch/vch/ueber-uns
- ↑ http://www.vch.ch/
- ↑ http://www.foresterievaldesi.it/
- ↑ http://www.christian-hotel.com/
- ↑ http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/leben/reisen/Die-christlichen-Hotels-florieren/story/18746628
- ↑ https://www.vch.ch/vch/ueber-uns
