A German hotel group has just filed for bankruptcy, and it could have major implications for Hyatt’s presence in Germany, as flagged by Frankfurtflyer.
In this post:
Lindner Hotels has serious financial issues
German hotel group Lindner Hotels AG has just filed for bankruptcy in Dusseldorf District Court, so the company is opening insolvency proceedings under self administration. Lindner manages over 30 hotels in Europe, with most of its properties being in Germany. However, only 13 of the properties are actually owned by Lindner, and are therefore impacted by the insolvency.
As it impacts the miles & points world, in 2023 we saw Hyatt and Lindner launched a partnership, whereby Lindner properties were integrated into World of Hyatt. What I find interesting is that several months back, Hyatt acquired the me and all hotels (yes, it’s lowercase) from Lindner, so that won’t be impacted by this.
Financial statements from Lindner show that the hotel group lost around 10 million EUR in each of 2020 and 2021, with the company’s downfall being blamed on expensive lease agreements with very long terms, making it hard for the company to stop operating unprofitable hotels.
With the company filing for insolvency, we’ll see if Lindner can negotiate down those costs in a way that allows hotels to continue operating, or what exactly happens. Most of the major global hotel groups don’t actually own a vast majority of their properties, but as you can see, Lindner does own many of its properties, so that can pose a major challenge when the hotels aren’t doing well.
What does this mean for the Hyatt partnership?
For the time being, Lindner properties will continue to operate as before. However, Germany doesn’t have the same Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection laws we have in the United States, where companies can often just shed some debt and resume business as usual.
So only time will tell how this plays out, given the serious structural issues the company has. Can Lindner renegotiate some contracts? Could the company’s assets be acquired by another investor? Only time will tell.
For now it’s business as usual, but I’d maybe be cautious about making any non-refundable or pre-paid bookings. If you’re looking at this from the Hyatt side, keep in mind that me and all hotels is now owned by Hyatt rather than Lindner, so that should be safe, and not impacted by this situation.
Bottom line
Lindner Hotels AG has filed for insolvency, as the hotel group has been losing money, largely due to some long term leases of properties that haven’t proven to be profitable. While the hotel group is continuing to operate for the time being, the future is quite uncertain, so we’ll see how this evolves…
What do you make of this Lindner Hotels situation?
So sad to hear this...I stayed at the Linder Prague hotel earlier in Oct this year. It was a nice hotel and the staff are super friendly.
Same here. I stayed there over the summer, and it was a very comfortable stay with amazingly kind staff.