On the occasion of the 2nd General Assembly after the establishment of the Hotelstars Union as an international non-profit organization under Belgian law (AISBL) in early 2021, the members elected the previous Vice-President Markus Luthe (Germany) as the successor to President Jens Zimmer Christensen (Denmark), who is leaving after four successful years in office. The new board of directors of the Hotelstars Union is completed by Thomas Allemann (Switzerland) as Vice-President, MHRA Senior Vice President George Micallef (Malta), Thierry Lemahieu (Belgium) and Jan Fischer (Denmark). The Hotelstars Union Secretariat remains with Maria Dinboeck from the Austrian Professional Hotel Association (APHA).
„Together with my colleagues, I will take over responsibility for an excellently positioned association from Jens Zimmer Christensen and I am looking forward to continuing its work in the interests of our European-wide harmonised hotel stars. Despite the pandemic situation, we are in a constructive spirit of optimism with regard to our joint hotel classification and we are actively looking forward to the challenges that are emerging particularly clearly, especially in the areas of sustainability and digitisation,” explains Markus Luthe. „I am very pleased to see Jens Zimmer Christensen continue to work closely with us as President of our European industry association HOTREC.“
“In the past four years, with the comprehensive and timely modernisation of our common catalogue of criteria, but above all with the organisational transformation of the Hotelstars Union into a corporation under Belgian law, we have been able to set the course for a successful future for harmonised hotel classification. I am sure that the European hotel stars will continue to shine in the future and will retain and expand their strong appeal for other countries in Europe,” says Jens Zimmer Christensen. „I will continue to contribute in a different role in the future!“
Hotelstars Union (HSU) operates under the patronage of HOTREC Hospitality Europe, which is the hotel associations of Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland. The Hotelstars Union, was founded in 2009 and incorporated as AISBL in 2021. The Hotelstars Union is based on a common criteria catalogue for hotel classification and, with over 22,000 classified hotels or 1.2 million classified rooms in its member countries, offers transparency, quality and security for guests and hoteliers.