Hotels as Neighbourhood Hubs and Third Places | Industry Leaders Inspiration

This fireside chat at ITB Berlin 2026, moderated by Jan Huizing (researcher at Hotelschool The Hague), brought together Dr. Ingo Burmester (CEO Hotel Division, DERTOUR Group) and Dr. Renée Nicole Wagner (Corporate Director ESG & Quality Management, Orascom Hotels Management) to explore how hotels can function as neighbourhood hubs and 'third places' for local communities.

DERTOUR Group, now exceeding 10 billion euros in annual revenue, operates across the full tourism value chain including DMCs and hotels. Orascom Hotels Management, an Egyptian operator based in Zurich, runs 34 hotels across Montenegro, Switzerland, Oman, and Egypt. Both companies are grappling with how to embed themselves meaningfully into local communities at their destinations.

Renée Wagner defined community expansively — not just geographic neighbors but the entire business ecosystem: front-of-house staff, back-office teams, and crucially, suppliers. She resists distinguishing between community types by destination geography (mountain vs. beach), arguing the relational fundamentals remain the same. Her approach to ESG's social dimension involves building mandatory 'social days' into the annual hotel strategy roadmap across all 34 properties, using existing passionate team members as internal champions to bring others along.

A standout human case study: an Egyptian GM at their El Gouna (Aluna) property who retired but was brought back at 50% capacity to serve as a local ESG champion — preserving institutional and cultural knowledge while keeping an engaged team member active. Wagner described this as her 'local hero' model.

Ingo Burmester drew a sharp distinction between two types of destination development: entering an existing ecosystem where infrastructure is already in place versus pioneering a 'virgin' destination like the Maldives, Morocco in its early days, or Cabo Verde. In the latter scenario, the hotel group must work closely with local communities to understand the existing ecological and cultural ecosystem before developing. He cited specific sustainability challenges: freshwater supply via reverse osmosis, solar photovoltaic and photothermal energy systems as alternatives to CO2-heavy power infrastructure. His core argument: ecological best practice and economic best practice frequently align — sustainability is not a cost centre.

DERTOUR's Henry Hotels brand in Hamburg was highlighted as a concrete third-place example: a ground-floor living room and kitchen concept in a tower property that invites local residents and external visitors to use workspace, eat affordably, and interact with hotel guests. Burmester uses it regularly as a personal workspace. The brand is planned for expansion.

A striking community integration case from the Canary Islands: DERTOUR's Plitas (in Fantura village) sports hotel opened its entire sports infrastructure — padel courts, golf course, and other facilities — to the public for free. They also run an on-property grocery store priced slightly below the village shop, which now supplies 70% of the local Plitas village's grocery needs, turning the hotel into a genuine community anchor. The property also builds staff housing in response to the Canary Islands over-tourism crisis driving apartment costs beyond staff affordability.

The conversation identified two structural dilemmas that Burmester explicitly asked researchers to investigate: (1) The income gap between source markets and destination labor markets — HR costs in Egypt are below 20% of total costs vs. over 45% in Switzerland, creating a fundamental tension between affordable luxury offerings and genuine community economic integration; (2) The cultural distance problem — when cultural differences are large, intentional bridging formats and actions are needed, not just information sharing. Burmester also flagged supply chain localization as a challenge: standardized quality requirements from existing fixed suppliers make it hard to onboard local suppliers who may not meet brand standards.

Wagner's closing challenge to the panel: how to best involve local communities in terms of inclusion — not just engagement on the hotel's terms, but genuine inclusion of all stakeholder types.