New Trade Fair Hotel in Essen: Many Years of Waiting, But an End in Sight

The hoping and planning lasted many years, but the building structure of the Congress Hotel Messe Essen was completed after only six month's work. The investor Kurt Zech and Essen's lord mayor Dr. Wolfgang Reiniger today celebrated the topping-out ceremony, together with representatives of Zech Hotel Holding, the building companies involved in the construction and a large number of invited guests. The hotel will open its doors at the end of the year 2009.

Located directly at the Grugahalle, this superior, 4-star hotel will provide its guests with 250 rooms and suites, a special Executive Floor with a separate business lounge, a restaurant with outer terrace, a wine cellar, a bar and a smokers’ lounge. Another major attraction is the large congress zone, which covers an area of 1,200 square metres. This will contain nine multifunctional rooms for organized events catering for up to 620 persons. This makes it one of the largest hotels in the Ruhr district and one of the city of Essen's biggest providers of conference space. Boardrooms and media suites, as well as a fitness and wellness area, complete the offer. The building also has a basement garage. The investment volume amounts to around 30 million euros.

"Within the framework of a European-wide call for tenders, we found the construction and operating concept proposed by the Zech Business Group the most convincing, said Dr. Wolfgang Reiniger. In the end, around the middle of last year, everything suddenly went very quickly. The Zech Group kept its promise to quickly commence with the work and to complete the construction rapidly, with the consequence that one is already able to celebrate the topping-out ceremony, said a pleased lord mayor.

The finished building will be run by the hotel operating company Zech Hotels GmbH. The company already operates the Holiday Inn Essen City Centre and the Holiday Inn Düsseldorf/Neuss. Moreover, the Zech Group has a 50 percent holding in the ATLANTIC Hotel cooperation, which at present has five hotels in the city-state of Bremen. Three further hotels in northern Germany will be added to the list in 2010.

The number of overnight stays in the Ruhr district notably increased during the past year, particularly in Essen, the "capital city of the Group". "These figures make us feel very optimistic. We are happy that, with our new hotel, we can make a further contribution towards the Jahr der Kulturhauptstadt Ruhr 2010 [Year of the Cultural Capital Ruhr 2010], the city itself and the trade-fair location of Essen, as well as the entire metropolitan region," said Kurt Zech.