Press Release:
How The Hearts Hotel is creatively navigating the coronavirus crisis
Highest New Work Hotel in Northern Germany adapts its strategy
Braunlage, May 12, 2020 – The Hearts Hotel in the Harz National Park, along with award-winning interim managers Ulvi Aydin, Siegfried Lettmann, and Peter Kuhle, believes in tourism and innovative business models. Together, they form a unique model to prepare the Harz region and Meik Lindberg’s innovative hotel concept for the post-coronavirus era.
The Hearts Hotel was a flagship project in northern Germany before the pandemic. Two former startup founders purchased a former training center of the Barmer Ersatzkasse two years ago and transformed it into the first budget-oriented living, stay, and work boutique event hotel in northern Germany. The investment volume amounted to 5.6 million euros. The hotel boasts ideal facilities, with each room equipped with its own Wi-Fi, and the smart TVs can be connected to all devices.
The hotel’s design encourages creativity and a forced deceleration, attracting new target groups to the Harz region: entrepreneurs, managers, or founders who develop new ideas, strategize as a team, or complete projects in a peaceful environment. Set in the midst of nature, with a co-working atmosphere and high-quality designed spaces, it allows guests to work where others vacation. Sat.1, NDR, Der Tagesspiegel, BILD, Schöner Wohnen, and many other media outlets have reported on this innovative hotel. “We thought 2020 would be our year,” says Meik Lindberg, “until the lockdown happened.”
Getting creative during the pandemic:
Lindberg enlisted the help of award-winning interim managers Ulvi Aydin, Peter Kuhle, and Siegfried Lettmann to support him. Together, they developed strategies for moving forward. “Examining and optimizing business models thoroughly is one of our strengths,” explains Siegfried Lettmann. Through several strategy meetings, they identified two main focus areas:
- The post-coronavirus boom of domestic tourism in Germany
- The question: How will Germany conduct meetings in the future?
The Hearts Hotel has transformed from a New Work Hotel into a travel agency and conference hotel with state-of-the-art facilities. Germans will be taking regional vacations this year, and the hotel has received numerous inquiries. “We have hit the right chord with our measures,” says Lindberg. Due to the diverse industry expertise brought by the interim managers, Lindberg believes that an immense knowledge transfer has taken place.
They are currently preparing for the topic of “How will Germany conduct meetings in the future?” “The criteria for selecting conference venues will change, offering hotel operators a unique opportunity to position themselves,” says Peter Kuhle, the initiator of the partnership. “With our approaches, we are putting hotels and companies in the right starting position.”
Change is a dialogue:
Together with the three interim managers, Lindberg invites hotel operators, journalists, and managers to engage in a dialogue about transforming their own business models, the future of events, digitalization in the industry, and cross-industry knowledge transfer. “Our goal is to share our approaches and seize the opportunity presented by the crisis with other decision-makers,” says Ulvi Aydin. “The Hearts Hotel is positioned as a digital pioneer in the industry.” Interested parties can contact The Hearts Hotel or any of the interim managers.
About Meik Lindberg, Ulvi Aydin, Peter Kuhle, and Siegfried Lettmann:
Meik Lindberg is the managing director of The Hearts Hotel in the Harz National Park. He has spent 20 years in the startup scene as a founder and investor, and in 2018, he built Germany’s most innovative New Work boutique hotel. His entrepreneurial success is regularly covered in the media. For more information, visit www.heartshotel.com.
Ulvi Aydin is an award-winning interim manager, business and entrepreneur developer, advisor, and author. As an internationally operating interim CEO and CSO, he supports medium-sized companies and corporations in brand and market development, repositioning, restructuring, and sales excellence. He is tough on matters and respectful in his approach. For his clients, he is “the bitter medicine needed to become healthy again.” Aydin shares his experiences as an interim manager in various business media and as a columnist on Xing Insider. For more information, visit www.aycon.biz.
Peter Kuhle is an interim manager and consultant from Bad Honnef. He accompanies companies in critical growth and transformation phases. With extensive experience in sales, service, efficiency, and various management positions in renowned corporations and medium-sized companies, his specialties lie in sales, direct sales, after-sales, service, and technical customer service. He is a recipient of the “Interim Management Excellence Award.” For more information, visit www.peterkuhle.com.
Executive interim manager Siegfried Lettmann specializes in (digital) transformation in sales and marketing. In his mandates, he serves as the head of sales, marketing, and product management or temporarily assumes company leadership. The experienced interim manager has received multiple awards, including five Constantinus prizes, Interim Manager of the Year, the Interim Management Excellence Award, and Innovator of the Year 2020. He is also the program director of the Interim Executives Program at the European Business School, the only university-level continuing education program for interim managers in the German-speaking region. For more information, visit www.lettmann-interim.com.