Weary travellers will soon have a host of places to choose from to put their heads down

It's estimated the investment will cost between zł.250-300 million.

Building on success

Port Hotel owns the Courtyard Warsaw International Airport Hotel (Courtyard Warsaw), which opened in October 2003 and has proved a major success.  After its first 10 months, Courtyard reported revenue of zł.11.7 million and profits of zł.2.6 million - not too shabby for a company in its first year of operation.

Now, Port Hotel sees the same potential for success at other airports around the country.

"We're talking about [building these hotels] now because of [Port Hotel's] recent success with Courtyard," says Alex Kloszewski, head of the hotel department at Colliers International. "I think it really came to their heads about a year ago when they looked at the numbers, they looked at their results and said: 'Wow, we should do this everywhere.'"

Kloszewski adds that Port Hotel is in a very advantageous position to carry out the investment. "They understand the relationships between their hotel and their airports, which obviously helps from a business point of view," he says.

Port Hotel's president, Witold Ignatowski, says that the experience with Courtyard has proved to him that the demand for budget hotels is growing: "People are always asking us where the nearest budget hotel is," he says. "We don't have so many budget hotels in Poland. It's necessary to build these hotels for regular people, not just for businessmen." Two-star hotels will therefore make up the majority of the new constructions, under an internationally recognized brand, while four or five four-star hotels will go up around the bigger hubs, under the Courtyard brand.

Passenger boom

The growing number of potential clients also influenced Port Hotel's decision: "Due to the increase of cheap airlines, the number of people coming to Poland by plane has been increasing really fast," Ignatowski says. "These people need a place to stay."

It's a bit of an understatement. The number of passengers handled by Polish airports in 2004 jumped 26 percent over the previous year, to nearly nine million - that's against an average seven-percent growth for the four years previous. By 2020, the number of air passengers in Poland is expected to nearly quadruple to 35 million.

Much of that increase is coming from regional airports, where passengers have to make their way 10km or 20km to find a place to lay their heads. Gdańsk and Wrocław both saw passenger numbers grow by over 25 percent, while Poznań and Krakow recorded growth rates of over 40 percent.

At Katowice International Airport (KIA), the number of passengers in the first seven months this year is already equal to the number of passengers throughout the whole of 2003, and is 232 percent higher than the same period last year, when traffic was on its way to a 141-percent year-on-year increase.

Thus, Port Hotel believes that it can repeat the success it has had with the Courtyard at Chopin, where traffic continues to grow (18 percent last year), and has directly impacted Courtyard's bottom line. "In comparison with the first half of 2004, occupancy increased approximately 20 percent in the first half of this year," says Iwona Świdek, director of sales and marketing at Courtyard Warsaw.

In turn, the company has seen revenues rise by 42 percent, revenue per room by 50 percent and profits by 146 percent. "We are the example that there is really a need for such hotels," says Świdek.

Making its move

A decision on whether to build all the proposed hotels is expected before the end of next year, but already preparations for a hotel in Bydgoszcz are well under way, and could be realized next year. It's an exception to the concept Port Hotel envisions as it's not planned to be built next to the airport, but in the center of the city, as just 4km separates the airport from the city center.

Thereafter, the larger regional airports are first on the list to receive their inns. Port Hotel has entered discussions with a company empowered by KIA's management - the Upper-Silesia Air Association (GTL) - to build a hotel there. Hotels at the airports in Kraków, Wrocław, Gdańsk and Poznań should go up sooner rather than later. Warsaw, where a new terminal with a 10-million passenger capacity will be finished by April next year, is also slated to get a two-star hotel to go along with its four-star Courtyard.

Next will be the smaller airports, such as Rzeszów, Sczeczin and Łodź. The group is also examining the possibility of building a hotel close to the new Modlin airport near Warsaw, which is expected to begin operations sometime next year.

"If we will not do this, somebody else will," said Ignatowski. "Courtyard by Marriot proved to everybody just how good a business this is."