EHL Investment property report 2025 | Vienna

Round table - Hospitality

Higher yields with shorter rentals

It doesn’t always need to be housing. Or office or re- tail. EHL invited leading experts to a roundtable dis- cussion on the rapidly growing “hospitality“ business and how it could become a profitable alternative to other investment property uses.

Mr Peham: Residential use dominates in Vienna‘s investment properties, followed by office and retail space. Why, then, are we talking about the relatively small hospitality business today? Herwig M. Peham: Hospitality is, based on the existing supply of properties, undoubt- edly a comparatively small segment. But considering the transaction volume, in other words the area where changes are coming, the percentage is much higher and, above all, is increasing rapidly. Hotels and other uses linked with hospitality today make up an increasingly impressive share of investment transactions and there are

from political intervention in the much larger residential segment?

added possibilities for growth – also in the investment property segment.

Daniel Jelitzka: There are a number of obvious reasons for this. The most recent is simply the high interest phase that is still not completely over – and continues to drive the search for profitable investments. Included here are special uses that are not often considered like logistics and data centres, but also hospitality which is basically a good match with investment properties. A look at the numbers shows that tourism is currently the absolute super investment vehicle and will still be the most attractive segment for the

Jelitzka: Of course, that also plays a role because the endless discussions over rent caps in Austria is a source of considerable irritation throughout the entire real estate market. Regardless of whether rental prices are limited or inflation adjustments are capped, Austrian as well as internation- al investors are uneasy. And that naturally makes a “flight” into commercial uses – which is the subject of our discussion today – an obvious option. Mr Vollmayr: Tourism, meaning your branch, is the absolute super investment alternative according to Mr Jelitzka. That’s a nice complement, but how do you see the possibilities for investment properties in this area? Are these properties particularly suit- able, comparable for or not as good for the hospitality business as new construction? Josef Vollmayr: I basically agree with Daniel’s market analysis and would like to add a few statistics to support this position. Eight of the ten countries with

next 10 to 15 years. Europe is responsible for roughly half of the 1.5 million hotel overnight stays worldwide. The Continent is, and will remain, the global tourism hotspot and, specifi- cally, nearly 10 per cent of the service sector is connected with tourism – that represents an enormous potential.

But isn’t the real issue the flight

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