Interhotel

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Interhotel was an East German hotel chain founded in 1965. Originally, the hotel chain consisted of a hotel each in Berlin, Erfurt, Jena and Magdeburg, two hotels in Chemnitz (then Karl-Marx-Stadt) and five hotels in Leipzig. 5-star hotels were exclusively reserved for guests from non-socialist states who booked their tours through the Intertourist travel agency and flew into East Germany via Interflug airlines. They were also allowed to shop at Intershop stores because East Germany needed hard currency from the West. 4-star hotels were mainly for guests from Comecon countries, for example, the HotelStadt Berlin was built for Soviet guests. There were also some 3-star hotels in smaller towns, such as Hotel Elephant in Weimar. Practically all luxury hotels in East Germany were part of the Interhotel chain, notable exceptions being the Neptun hotel in Warnemünde and Cecilienhof castle in Potsdam. The Verband Deutscher Konsumgenossenschaften (VDK), the union of consumer co-operatives in the GDR also ran hotels, mainly three and four-star hotels such as the Konsum Erholungsheim in Oberhof, which is still part of what remains of the co-operative movement in Germany. After German reunification, most of the hotels were still run by Interhotel AG. In 1991, some hotels were sold to the Klingbeil group, and in December 2006 some were sold to the Blackstone Group. The Interhotel hotels were under the control of the East German state security service, the Stasi, under the Tourist Department. The Stasi tried to monitor the activities of international tourists, by sending prostitutes to audio- and video-controlled hotel rooms. They focused on hotels where political decisions were discussed, such as Hotel Bellevue in Dresden.