Daniela Pfefferkorn is the owner and manager of the four-star superior Hotel Goldener Berg in Oberlech.
She is also co-owner of Hospiz Hotels and Restaurants in the mountains of Tyrol and Vorarlberg in west Austria, which also includes the historic five-star Arlberg Hospiz hotel in St. Christoph, formerly a refuge for travellers crossing the Arlberg and dating back to the 14th century.
How do you market the two hotels?
We do a lot on the internet. We have a very good company that helps us with social media and the kinds of things you need to be done by Google. We do a lot for our regular guests, and we do some PR and we do a lot for the partners we work with, the travel agents. We are also represented by organisations: Chic Collection, plus Arlberg Hospiz is with Preferred Hotels, and Goldener Berg is with Lifestyle Hotels.
We have been doing this for 20 years you get to know people all over the world, through friendships, actually. The Arlberg Hospiz was previously with Relais and Chateaux for 30 years and they are different kinds of marketing organisations. The Chic Collection is a guide to beautiful hotels.
Do you concentrate on marketing the hotels, or the destination?
We work closely with our colleagues in the region to market the destination. Once they come we are all offering a very specialised product and every hotelier is for himself. It is different from Swiss situations where you have directors in hotels. Every hotel has its own character and is family-owned, and then you find people, guests, who want exactly what you can offer.
In the case of both hotels, the history is part of the story we tell our guests. The Goldener Berg is a medieval farm house converted in the 1900s. We only have 38 rooms but we have 65 to 70% regular repeat guests.
Where do your guests come from?
For both hotels it is approximately40% Germans, 25% from the UK, and then Austrians, Benelux, Scandinavians, Swiss and Americans. The UK has come down slightly and Germany picked that up. Russia is coming back. We've never had many Russians in Arlberg but now we are getting more and more. Our mix is representative of the region.
What are the seasons for the hotels?
The two seasons are mid-June until end of September, beginning of October. We close for October and November and open at the end of November through until the end of April.
How do you run a hotel that is only open nine months a year?
It presents huge challenges. We are only really earning money for five months a year. The summer is great but it isn't very profitable, so you have to really cut your costs as much as possible and sell every coffee and bowl of soup you can. There's nothing so bad as a room not used for the night so we try and sell, sell, sell. 2009 was our best season ever, but 2010 has been more challenging.
How do you handle the staffing?
At the height of the season we employ 230 people in all the hotels and restaurants. We have lots of seasonal workers, especially since the winter season is our main season. we have our young people who are doing an internship, and then we have some people who work with us year round and they go on vacation in-between. Year-round we have probably only 15 people: manager, reservations and F&B team. The chef, sommelier and maitre'd are with us for two seasons.
Have you looked at opening a place on the coast or in a summer destination?
Yes, but opening in the summer is worth doing. It's really an advertisement for the winter. Everyone who comes in summer wants to come back in the winter because it's so lovely. We have opened for eight summers, and it's starting to work for us. I am sure within a few years it will be good and we'll make some money in the summer. It will never be comparable, because the rates in the summer are 35-40% less than in the winter, unfortunately. It represents very good value for money. We use a little less lobster and caviar and a little more beef, perhaps. Not all of the other hotels in the area open in the summer but more and more are doing so, and of course the more they do, then the more guests will come. You just have to open and look as if you are successful.
Do the hotels get incentive groups staying?
The Arlberg Hospiz did, yes, in previous years, but they pretty much ended during the economic crisis. The incentives were very international. We had the Bank of America, UBS, big car companies, sports companies, for product launches, but usually they went skiing a lot and had a lot of nice dinners. They would go dog sledding, or do alpine archery. Typically they would last three or four days, and sometimes if they had exclusive use they had to take the whole property for the week. It's difficult if you have a big incentive. With 80 rooms it's hard to have the other 320 rooms with private guests. We have free wifi throughout the hotel.
The hotels are very proactive on environmental issues.
Yes, but I think Austria is so much more into the environment than other countries, and Lech is very much into that. We don't use oil anymore, we use our own power plant that the village is heated with. We use solar energy. We have a great bus systems so no one has to drive anymore. Oberlech is car free and we shuttle goods underground. We try to buy only with local farmers, we don't take water from Italy to Austria, we take Austrian, and we try not to sell wine from South America, so we try and get emissions down as much as possible.
Food and drink seems to be a big part of the draw for guests.
That and skiing, yes. All of the restaurants serve Austrian food. We have the Panorama restaurant, where you have a seven-course dinner with three choices for the main course, and then two more - the Bergstubel and the Johannesstubli with very high quality Austrian cuisine. It's what people want. The chef is Austrian, the sommelier is Austrian and our people are German and Austrian.
The wine cellar in the Arlberg Hospiz was originally founded by the Brotherhood of St. Christoph but it has more than 18,000 bottles of wine at the beginning of the season including one of the largest collections of magnum bottles of Bordeaux wines in Europe. We also have a great collection of Austrian wines in the Goldener Berg.
Last year we launched a "dine around". Guests can dine in the restaurants in the hotel and some restaurants outside in the village as part of the half board meal and they only pay for their drinks.
You have spas in both properties, including 1000M2 AT THE Arlberg Hospiz and a new 500-m2 one in the Goldener Berg, which only has 38 rooms. Can you make money out of a spa?
You can. You will never get back the money you spent on building it, but you can make money. You make the money on more guests coming so you make the money on the rooms. And it is necessary, particularly in the summer. All the products are local. I don't believe we should have an Asian spa. We have the most beautiful nature around the spa - The Alpine Spa - and all the products are Austrian, we have our own brand. It's what I believe in, this local provenance. They can do a sushi bar if they like, but we are in Austria and it's what the guests come to the mountains for - Austrian hospitality, Austrian nature. That's why they are here and it's who I am, so it's very easy for me to present that; I'm not Asian.