Salzburg-based hotel group IMLAUER Hotel & Restaurant GmbH has acquired 5-star Alpine hotel Pichlarn castle from Schörghuber Group.
Pichlarn castle is the first leisure-focused property in the Austrian group, whose portfolio consists of 4-star city hotels in Vienna and Salzburg, as well as event centres and restaurants. The 96-room hotel is located in holiday destination Ennstal and includes 680,000sqm of ground, a spa, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, a helicopter landing pad, and an 18-hole golf course surrounding.
Austria was touted as one of Europe’s new hospitality hot spots before the Covid crisis hit, with a record volume of hotel transactions of EUR 1.26 billion in 2019 and over 12,000 rooms due to be added to the hotel market in the years to come. Lukas Hochedlinger, Managing Director at Christie & Co, who worked on the transaction says “The leisure segment has been hit less hard by the coronavirus pandemic than city hotels, making this a logical step for [owner] Mr. Imlauer. He is expanding his hotel portfolio and thus showing diversity in the crisis”.