We are opening our resorts! Hooray!

After almost three months of ghostly emptiness in our resorts, life is finally being allowed to return. I can’t properly express in words the happiness we all feel and the positive excitement about our reopening – we love what we do – and finally we, the Familux Family, can once again welcome families to our resorts and provide them with happy moments at the highest level. Parents get the opportunity to enjoy some time alone in peace and quiet, while their little darlings can spend a carefree time with new friends their own age. But will they really be able to have a carefree time on holiday? I put this important question and a few others to the managing director and co-owner of Familux Resorts, Florian Mayer.

Dear Florian, thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions. First of all, the most important question on everyone’s minds: Which Corona measures are being implemented in the resorts and where do you see the biggest challenges? Florian Mayer: First of all, it has to be said that, as family hotels at the highest level, we have already set up an above-average standard of hygiene in all our hotels before Corona in order to guarantee the safety of our guests at all times. Due to the spaciousness of our restaurants, for example, families have always been assigned their fixed table for the entire duration of their stay and these now also comply with the minimum distance regulations. The number of disinfection dispensers in the buffet areas as well as in all public areas has been increased many times over and our staff will wear face visors. In addition, about 40 staff members are assigned to clean and disinfect the public areas several times a day. Furthermore, the staff will receive additional, detailed instruction in hygiene regulations before we open and will be sensitised to the regulations during operation. Of course, there will be more checks by the management team and our hygiene company to ensure the higher standard. Of course, we implement everything that is prescribed by law and recommended by specialists. It would go beyond the scope of this article to list everything here, but you can take a detailed look at the measures on our website, for example at https://www.dachsteinkoenig.at/info-mehr/sicher-urlauben/. However, we also expressly rely on the personal responsibility of our guests to maintain the minimum distance in public areas and to wash and disinfect their hands thoroughly on a regular basis. I see the biggest challenge in the fact that people can forget to keep their distance when they are on holiday, but I assume that we will manage this well by politely pointing out the recommendations.

Florian Mayer: We all hope that the measures and cuts in our everyday life will only be short-lived, but of course we need a lot of personal responsibility. I assume that if everyone remains disciplined, the rules of conduct will gradually be relaxed by the end of the year. Long-distance travel is not recommended this year; families should have the certainty of being able to go home at any time. Holidays in nature with lots of fresh air and short travel times will come to the foreground – so to say “holidays at home”, far away from mass tourism, will once again be of high quality. For us in Austria and in the Allgäu, this means a great opportunity – as is well known, the good things are so close here – and guests will increasingly appreciate this. *Now to another topic. Our hotels were closed for three whole months. Anyone who knows the Mayer family knows that there are great visionaries at work here who see opportunities even in times of crisis. Florian Mayer: After a short period of shock, which probably affected every single one of us, the organisation of the closure and the associated administrative work, some ideas that we had collected, but also projects that could not be implemented during ongoing operations without disturbing guests, were taken out of the drawer and the tasks for this were distributed in the individual resorts. In the Dachsteinkönig, for example, the new water playground was built next to the outdoor pool. The entire outdoor area was spruced up and maintained. Wooden furniture and floors were sanded and oiled inside and outside. At the Alpenrose, we were able to start the renovation, which was already planned last year, five weeks earlier. We are really on schedule here. It is the biggest renovation since our main house in Lermoos was built and is now entering the final phase. We have not been idle in the Allgäu either. In Oberjoch – Familux Resort, a lot of furniture in the public areas was renewed and the entire house was given a new coat of paint inside and out. We were not bored; we were actually rather busy! *One last question for you personally: What are you most looking forward to when the doors open again in our resorts? Florian Mayer: After being a “hotelier since childhood”, I am most looking forward to our guests. I have spent the last three months almost alone with my partner at the Dachsteinkönig in Gosau, I have never been without guests for so long in my 33 years. The happy parents and the happy children who come to visit us and have a wonderful time, and of course the family members of the Familux Family, our holiday beautifiers, who together with us, the Mayer family, make up the resorts and give them heartbeat. A piece of normality returns to my everyday life, which I have missed very much and have learned to appreciate in a completely new way. Thank you for the interview! For more information on our measures to protect against Corona, please see our hotel websites.