Business Outlook 2025 | Hotels - Austria

In 2024, the Austrian hotel industry continued to face some challenges, but there were also encouraging signs of recovery and growth. Overall transaction volume remained subdued, with Austria’s total standing just above €200 million as of October 2024. However, there are currently some sizable hotels on the market in Austria, particularly in Vienna, which could boost the full year volume. With international travel reaching normal levels, we expect to see larger investors focusing on strong city markets such as Vienna and Salzburg.

Investors’ excessive appetite for resort hotels, which began in 2020 and 2021 and was fuelled by limited flights available to other destinations, now seems to be levelling off and giving way to previous demand levels. Hotels in Austria’s holiday regions continue to perform well; however, the majority of these hotels are owner-operated and have limited room capacities, meaning there are often few suitable properties available for larger investors. We have seen the most demand for resort hotels in Tyrol and Salzburg, which are also the two provinces with the most overnight stays in Austria. 

Christie & Co continues to play a key role in facilitating some of the most prominent deals in the region. Notably, we were instrumental in multiple successful operator searches, ranging from the Holiday Inn Vienna South to several smaller hotels in Lower Austria. We also assisted owners in successfully marketing their assets, ranging from the ibis budget Sankt Marx to an undisclosed five-star hotel in Vienna’s famous Ringstrasse. These achievements have solidified our position as the most active hotel broker in Austria.

We anonymously surveyed hotel business owners across the country to gather their views on the year ahead.

• Operating costs will continue to stabilize or even reduce, helping bottom line profitability of hotels
• More sizable hotels will come to market as institutional owners continue to sell off their assets
• Cash-rich operators and owner-operators will emerge as opportunistic buyers
• ESG/sustainability will become mainstream for corporate investors