Just taking off in Poland

In Poland, as hard as you might look, in the end it's only beyond the airport compound that you'll find a hotel. That is until June, when a four star Courtyard by Marriott Hotel will open right opposite the main terminal building at Warsaw's Okęcie airport: it will have 225 rooms. Some time later, a 114 room hotel is slated for Poznań's Ławica airport

"It's said that airport hotels are very strange beasts," remarks Sam Hurst of the London-based TRI Hospitality Consulting firm."This is because they are subject to huge fluctuations in demand. If an airline cancels a flight for example, the hotel gets an immediate influx of guests, which they then have to deal with. They are good places to learn yield management because you just don't know what's going to happen next."
To the extent airport hotels do already exist in Poland, it is in the immediate vicinity of the compound, and though they don't exactly face the arrivals hall, they still very much associate themselves with the airport, as is shown by the names they give themselves.

Near, yet so far
Tomasz Karpacki is General Director of the three star Airport Hotel Okęcie, which has 180 rooms and is located 800 metres from Warsaw's international airport. The hotel's name, the aeronautical pictures on the walls and the web site graphics, all point to a strong relationship with its big noisy neighbour.
"When we opened this hotel, we thought the airport would provide us with good business," says Karpacki.
The hotel entered the market in August 2001 but has failed to lure substantial custom from the arrivals' terminal, which leaks just a trickle of passengers in its direction: 3-5 per cent of the hotel's sales. The shuttle bus, which operates from airport to hotel, picks up only one or two passengers in the every half hour it makes a run.
"The hotels around the airport are ready to take guests, but the airport isn't quite ready to supply them with custom: it's too small and crowded," says Karpacki.
Other obstacles he cites are the taxi drivers who pounce on arriving passengers, so they might take them for a pricey ride into the centre and the difficulties he has trying to monitor the advertising he pays for at the terminal.
"I have to get permission to check up on it, I have to fill out a lot of complicated forms and I need my passport, because it's situated outside the country, strictly speaking. I pay a lot of money but I can't look at my own advertising. It's strange," he says.

New in town
All the other hotels around the airport are also three star, so travellers looking for a bit more luxury head towards the centre, which in Warsaw is only a few kilometres away. However, Karpacki is hopeful that Poland's EU accession and the 'open sky' that will bring and the impending extension of the airport, will boost the trade coming in from those just off the plane. The situation as it now stands wouldn't seem to bode particularly well for the 'Courtyard by Marriott', though it of course will have the advantage of being in the airport itself and will be a notch up in standard from its nearby competitors.
According to June Farrell, Marriott's Vice-President of Public Relations, the hotel's target market is very specific: they want business travellers. Its four star status will mean a more utilitarian service than the mother chain provides. "People who come to Warsaw on short trips to do business, will come and stay at the hotel overnight," she says, adding that she thinks the "hotel has a huge possibility for success", because of Marriott's track record in this corner of the market, which it entered in 1957.
"People often prefer meeting up to do business at the airport, so that they don't get stuck in traffic on their way to the city centre," says Dorota Latkowska head of Knight Frank Nieruchomości's hotel section, "and this usually involves staying in an airport hotel for one or two days."

Freshen up
King Sturge's Airport Property Market Survey for 2002 indicates other sources of income for airport hotels, such as airline crews and the "24-7 shower, shave and shut-eye culture," whereby passengers with connecting flights some time away, can check-in for a few hours during the day to freshen up. The Airport Hotel Okęcie already offers this service, from 8am to 6pm, but given the general lack of custom from arriving travellers, it hasn't seen much take up.
"We'll be looking at all the airport and flight patterns for Warsaw airport," says June Farrell, "if there are enough fourteen hour flights going in and out of the place, we'd probably bring in a service like that."

Hard thinking
The planned Poznań hotel will be entering a market, according to Katarzyna Bączyńska of Knight Frank, which is "developing at the slowest rate" in Poland, meaning that its operators will have to have all their marketing wits about them, before they unleash their "strange beast".