Christian Petersen runs the Hotel Speicher on the shore of Lake Ziegelsee in Schwerin. The 4-star superior hotel is located on the northern outskirts of the city within easy reach of the A14 motorway. Skippers can even come by boat from Hamburg and Berlin on the Elde-Störkanal and moor at one of the hotel’s own landing stages. The historic town centre is just 15 minutes away by foot.
The family-run hotel is one of the best address in Schwerin. People who stay here are first and foremost environmentally friendly, with an appreciation for elegant surroundings, the individual touch, sustainability, the waterside location, and courteous service in particular. Most guests come from Germany. At the weekend, they are from Hamburg and Berlin to enjoy a short break away from it all. But the listed former granary building also attracts holidaymakers from Scandinavia, Austria and Switzerland.
Appreciation from the word “go”
Conferences and events are another mainstay of the business, with the hotel working in cooperation with large companies and authorities in the state capital. Christian Petersen describes the special nature of the industry as follows: “The hospitality trade is really varied. We just love being hosts. It is an honest industry where people show immediate appreciation for service.” However: “No other sector of the economy faces quite the same scale of rating that we do. Feedback spreads like lightning”, says the man from Upper Bavaria to describe his experience. Internet ratings matter greatly to the hotel. Every month the ratings are assessed together with the questionnaires that the guests receive after staying at the hotel. The aim is to make sure that complaints are taken seriously and that current wishes expressed by the guests are integrated in the company’s everyday routines.
“At the moment we’re upgrading the wellness area. That will create quite a stir”, says Christian Petersen, managing partner of the operating company HSZ Hotel Speicher am Ziegelsee GmbH. The upgrade includes various saunas, multi-sensory showers, a relaxation area with a library and a private spa. The investment costs of around 800,000 Euro are being co-funded by the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund. This is part of the EU’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The hotel manager can still remember exactly what it was like on 18 March 2020 when he told the employers gathered in the lobby that they were being put on indefinite furlough. Then he locked the hotel doors. “The two Covid years made a deep incision in the life of the hotel. It was like being banned from working. It meant I lost a lot of skilled staff. Fortunately, I was able to keep the trainees”, recalls Christan Petersen.
Healthy staff radiate hospitality
Today, the hotel that first opened in August 1998 is well staffed with altogether 45 employees. Measures to counteract staff fluctuation have been in place for years. “With our workforce, we have the necessary flexibility to cover for absences caused by sickleave”, says Christian Petersen, whose grandparents were already in the hospitality trade. At the same time, he sets great store by training hotel and restaurant staff as well as cooks. A recruiting agency in Schwerin that has contacts to a school in Hanoi arranges for young people to come here for training. The current team of seven trainees includes five from Vietnam who have successfully completed the admission procedure. The workforce also includes four Ukrainians who work in housekeeping and in the kitchen.
The hotel employees work a five day week with eight hours a day, followed by two days off. An electronic time recording system ensures no-one accrues overtime, with an app that gives every employee an overview. The staff are also offered a range of benefits, including supplementary health insurance which entitles them to be treated like private patients so that they receive better health care and can go for screening tests at an earlier point in time. The entrepreneur is sure that employees can only radiate hospitality when they stay healthy, enjoy coming to work and feel good in their job.
Environmental awareness in all areas
Environmental awareness is firmly anchored in all parts of the company. For example, district heating is supplied by the municipal utilities, together with 100 percent green electricity from a municipal energy provider. All refrigerators in the storeroom are state of the art, and the mini-bars in the guest rooms are only filled and switched on at the guest’s request. “We’ve banned all energy guzzlers and use modern means to keep our power consumption low”, says the hotel manager. Heat recovery is just one example: the dishwasher in the kitchen is fitted with a heat exchanger that converts hot exhaust air into cool air which is used for air-conditioning in the immediate surroundings. The same principle is used in the wellness area.
Furthermore, suppliers are chosen specifically in terms of the smallest possible carbon footprint. In other words, fruit and vegetables are purchased from regional sources according to the specific season, with many organic-certified ingredients on the menu.
The hotel has also made progress in terms of alternative drives. An electric car is available for guests and a vehicle for hotel staff and management. Hotel guests also make frequent use of the six electric bikes. There also plans to construct more charging points for electric cars.
In October 2005, the Hotel Speicher was the first in the Mecklenburg-Schwerin region to be certified for its environment concept by Viabono, a joint initiative by the German government in cooperation with tourism, environment and consumer associations. Just a few years later, in 2010 the Hotel Speicher was the first in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to offer its guests climate-neutral accommodation. In the same year, the hotel was co-founder of “Climate Hotels Germany”, an initiative whose members work together with the Viabono eco-label to fulfil the demands for certified, ecological hotel management. The “climate hotels” are among the most environmentally friendly hotels in Germany. They have undertaken to continuously reduce their carbon footprint and to compensate for unavoidable emissions by investing in recognised climate project with their own reforestation project in Panama. The “climate hotels” thus play a pioneering role in the hospitality industry.
“Finally, in November 2017 we were the first hotel in North Germany to be certified with a positive carbon footprint. Since then, our climate protection projects have ensured that more carbon dioxide is absorbed than generated by the operation of our hotel. Accordingly, we make a positive contribution to the environment. Anyone who sleeps in our hotel or attends a meeting here does something good for the climate”, says Christian Petersen with pride and adds: “Sometimes it’s not easy to juggle everything at the same time. We want to maintain the balance between our ecological vision and the demands of our guests, while still standing out from the rest of the market”; says the hotel operator, for whom hotel digitalisation is no longer a foreign concept. In the kitchen, for example, the traditional catering receipt bar has been replaced by a digital board. Here the chef de cuisine can see and update all orders together with the waiting times for the individual tables. Moreover, all staff have their duty rosters on their phones, and a smart board is currently being prepared for hotel guests with information about their stay. Out of respect for older holiday guests, Christian Petersen currently has no plans to introduce terminals for checking in and out, but wants to greet guests the traditional way to cultivate personal contacts.
About Christian Petersen
- born in 1965 in Rosenheim/Upper Bavaria
- domestic partnership, 2 children
- degree in business management from Passau University
- trainee with Bayerische Vereinsbank
- relocated to Hamburg
- self-employed businessman, importing food and packaging for the convenience sector
- co-founder of a coffee roasting house in Hamburg
- since 2005 managing partner of the operating company HSZ Hotel Speicher am Ziegelsee GmbH in Schwerin
Hotel Speicher am Ziegelsee
Sie sehen gerade einen Platzhalterinhalt von Standard. Um auf den eigentlichen Inhalt zuzugreifen, klicken Sie auf den Button unten. Bitte beachten Sie, dass dabei Daten an Drittanbieter weitergegeben werden.
Mehr Informationen
