Up in north Hessen (over two hours away from me), there's this small village of Gilserberg. It's a village of nowhere.....three-hundred-odd residents.....with an old railway station that was converted a decade or two ago into a 'bio-hotel'.
Defining a bio-hotel? Well....it has to be all natural. That means when you step into the room....it's a wood floor, natural materials, wood (no plastics), real cotton sheets, goose-feather pillows, and a restaurant that serves robust home-cooked meals with no additives. Somewhere nearby is a significant walking trail, plenty of open landscape, and flowing streams.
Things have gotten stirred up in Gilserberg for an odd reason. The town council (with the mayor) are firmed up to offer the bio-hotel operation for an asylum holding point. Yeah, they want to take the whole hotel operation and flip it over for a minimum of thirty asylum seekers. The selling point is that it's a quiet village and near a kindergarten. The locals? They've gotten pretty hostile about this offering deal....they don't want asylum seekers in the town.
The size of the rooms? From the various descriptions offered, these are your typical single bed or double bed rooms. You might be able to cram a couple with one kid into room.
From what the journalists say, there's a two-phase approach to this. Thirty folks would come in early March, and another group would come by May (making the final total between eighty and ninety).
Why seek a contract for the asylum hotel? I can only make a guess that the bio-hotel scheme for business isn't paying off. No one says what the government pays, but you'd have to assume they'd pay for each room rented and cover lunch and dinner options via the small restaurant within the hotel.
One might assume forty rooms....renting out at forty Euro a day, meaning 1,600 Euro a day, multiplied by thirty days? Over 48,000 Euro.....then toss in the lunch/dinner option, and you might be up around 58,000 Euro a month flowing through the hotel. That might be three or four times the normal amount of money that the hotel generates. Profit-wise, you might actually clear 200,000 Euro a year (before taxes).
The question is.....what type of characters will you be attracting? What will they be doing in their off-time? Will there be trouble? You can't predict this. You might run such a facility for two years and never have an ounce of trouble....ever.
My prediction is someone will watch over this and eventually make a commercial TV comedy over such a Hessen refugee center in some remote village, and make a hit out of it.
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