Marcus van der Wal is general manager of the Kempinski Hotel Corvinus which he describes as the Grande Dame of Budapest hotels. He tells ABTN about working in this beautiful city.
The Kempinski Corvinus is a striking building in central Budapest. Few would walk by without noticing it. But what makes it stand out is that it is a modern building among the city's grand old structures, like the nearby Gresham Palace, now a Four Seasons hotel.
When it opened 16 years ago, the Corvinus was the first five-star hotel in Hungary. Now with competition from more than a dozen other upmarket properties, its general manager Marcus van der Wal sees it as the Grand Dame of Budapest's hotels.
Mr van der Wal has worked at the Corvinus for three years and acknowledges that while it no longer the market leader, it is still a popular hotel for both the business traveller and the weekend leisure visitor to this great city.
"We are an interesting mix of leisure, business, MICE and corporate meetings. The leisure is getting stronger and stronger with cruises (on the Danube) stopping here. But we are mainly a business and conference hotel. It is a good mix," he said.
The business guests are mainly from Europe - the UK, Germany and Spain. Only about 5% are locals with most able to return home after a meeting.
The hotel has been extensively re-furbished of late and Mr van der Wal said the "product is in very good condition." For the business traveller, there is a total of 366 rooms including 31 suites, a business centre, a spa and a range of restaurants and bars.
"We don't charge for internet connections in rooms. It's not a good idea to charge for that - it's part of the show nowadays," he said. The hotel's ballroom has meetings space for up to 450 people while there are also five break out rooms with state of the art technology.
But as Mr van der Wal candidly points out, this has been a "a very bad year for business travel."
He adds: "Eastern Europe has been hit the most strongly. The drop in the business market is very much driven by rates at the moment. Rates in Budapest are very low.
"The first six months of this year have been catastrophic but the market is now slowly recovering. The five star industry has been cutting rates. In the first six months we tried to hold our rates but others did not.
"The majority of our customers just want to see the price, not the size of the room. That is a change in the market at the moment. The client was aware that you had a decent product but the price was the only criterion that was used for a decision. But things are getting better now."
But with pressure on revenue, the Corvinus has had to lay off staff and that is anathema for a general manager, not just because of the personal hardship colleagues might subsequently suffer but also because it challenges a hotel's level of service.
"If you do cost cuttings with lay offs, you do not want the guests to see you are undergoing cost cutting exercises. We have to find ways of letting the guests feel that the service is still at the same level," he said. But Mr van der Wal has also embarked on re-negotiations with suppliers as a better way to try and offset the drop in revenue.
There have also been other pressures on the hotel's financial position with staff salaries rising to nearer Western levels in the wake of Hungary joining the European Union in 2004. Before that, he said, profit levels could be as high as 40-50% but it was now difficult to maintain such a margin, particularly with five-star properties.
As a veteran of the industry, Mr van der Wal is aware of the need to change, especially in tough times. "You need to make changes and you do them more quickly when you really have to. I think if you do not change in crisis times, you will lose out," he said.
He seems to have entered the industry almost by chance. A native of Veldhem in The Netherlands, Mr van der Wal finished his schooling across the border in Germany as he is father wanted him to learn that language.
He learned Portuguese - and met his wife - while working in Brazil and studied French at Nice University. He also speaks English and Spanish although he gave up on Chinese after four months when he was general manager of the Kempinski Hotel Lufthansa Center in Beijing after accepting that his staff all spoke very good English. "Chinese is a very difficult language," he remembers.
He supplemented his degrees at Nice and Reims Universities with professional studies at the Centre International de Glion Hotel School in Switzerland before working for hotel chains including Radisson, InterContinental and Sheraton.
Mr van der Wal joined Kempinski in 1998 as its executive assistant manager of its Munich Airport property. He became manager in Beijing in 2000 and then, before joining the Corvinus, was general manager of the Kilimanjaro Hotel Kempinski Dar es Salaam and regional director Tanzania.
In his current role, he is also responsible for Kempinski properties in Slovakia.
He has enjoyed his travels enormously and advises anyone who gets the chance to work around the world to take it - "if you only stay in Germany, you have got a problem" - but, for the moment at least, he seems settled in Hungary and has won a major award for promoting tourism to the country.
"It's a great destination," he says. "But it is not as well known as it should be. It is the centre of Europe. You are just two hours from London."