Berlin, 5th March 2015 – A&O Hotels and Hostels will celebrate its 15th anniversary this year.
“I returned to Germany in 1999 from a trip round the world with an idea up my sleeve. I wanted to offer young people on tight budgets the opportunity to spend the night at a central location in major cities without breaking the bank. We opened our first house in Berlin Friedrichshain with just 164 beds in 2000. Since then, A&O Hotels und Hostels has gone from strength to strength, and today we provide 19,300 beds. Throughout this growth, we have remained true to our motto ‘at least two new hotels and hostels each year’”, says Oliver Winter, General Manager at A&O, with visible pride.
2015 will see a house open in Amsterdam on 1 May, and another one in Stuttgart on 1 September. The hotel and hostel in Venice will start operations in 2016. The hotel chain is currently collaborating with the Fraunhofer Institute to develop an innovative solution for mobile check-ins. The budget figures for 2015 are equally impressive: €93 million revenue and 3.2 million overnighters are the defined targets.
Interested readers will find further information at www.aohostels.com or under Free Call 0800 – 222 67 14
About A&O HOTELS and HOSTELS:
Founded in 1999, the A&O HOTELS and HOSTELS currently run Europe’s largest, independent hostel chain since the year 2000 with 25 locations in 16 cities and three countries (Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic). The A&O group offers more than 19.300 beds and registered more than 2.7 million overnight stays as well as a revenue of about 80 million euros in 2014. The hotel chain is currently growing at around 25 percent a year; further locations are scheduled to be opened soon. Openings planned for 2015: Amsterdam and Stuttgart.
A&O unite hostel (Book Orange) and hotel (Book Blue) under one roof. Additional components such as seminar rooms, breakfast buffet, lobby and bars are always available for both categories. The hostel areas are used each year by around 15,000 class trips; more than 70 percent of A&O’s guests book their accommodation online. The A&O target markets are leisure/city tourism (28 percent), groups/class trips (60 percent) and business tourism (12 percent).
The company provides vocational training at all locations. The company is 4-star QMJ certified, tested ‘Youth Hostel Quality Standard’ by TUV (Technical Inspection Association) and carries the youth travel quality seal of ‘Reisenetz Deutschland’ (Germany Travel Network). A&O are actively involved in sports and education and have supported SOS Children’s Villages since 2004 and the Youth League of 1. FC Union Berlin since 2010 and the Youth League of SK Sturm Graz since 2014.
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