The hotel market is recovering after the Corona crisis and is now moving in two directions: the high-priced luxury segment and the low-priced economy segment. This is where Düsseldorf-based roatel GmbH finds itself with its innovative and elegantly designed full-service containers.

The two founders, Ralf-Peter Kals and Christian Theisen, have developed hotel container boxes that can be set up at their customers' premises at short notice and whose administration and service is managed entirely by Roatel. The business idea came about when the Mobility Package 1 was announced, which the EU adopted in 2020. According to this, professional drivers are no longer allowed to spend their weekly rest period in their driver's cab. This regulation has greatly improved living conditions for drivers, but it has also created a new market.

The Roatel containers are not just a sleeping accommodation, but the concept is well thought-out in terms of environment, comfort and design. There are solar cells on the roofs of the containers. roatel takes care of all the management, sets up the containers in a day at short notice and pays its customers, whether gas stations or car service stations. What advantages do the locations have when they set up Roatel container hotels? Do the overnight guests feel at all comfortable in a container?

Christian Theisen believes that larger hotel chains are not yet venturing into the decentralized hotel concept. In any case, the market is there: Around 120,000 professional drivers are looking for a place to sleep every night, and traveling business and private people are not even included in this figure. Roatel wants to expand and is launching soon a crowd-funding campaign. 

October 18, 2022

Interview Directory 

BUSINESS

Name: Christian Theisen

Occupation: Co-founder, CEO roatel GmbH

Location: Düsseldorf, operates in whole of Germany

Can you explain again how the amendment of the Freight Transport Act in 2017 created a market for your concept? 

It is true that the so-called "cab sleeping ban" had already existed for several years in individual European countries. However, there was no uniform law across Europe. Therefore, in 2020, the EU passed Mobility Package 1, where various social regulations were newly regulated. These now apply uniformly throughout Europe. These include the regulation that professional drivers may no longer spend the weekly rest period in their driver's cab. The background to this is that there are black sheep among the trucking companies that have settled primarily in Eastern Europe and sometimes deploy employees for months on end throughout Europe. On the one hand, the new law will significantly improve living conditions for the drivers, but on the other hand, this questionable practice is no longer worthwhile due to the now higher costs. After all, the fines are almost EUR 4,000 in individual cases. 

In 2018, we dealt with the issue and analyzed the market. In 2019, we then founded Roatel GmbH, at a time when it was not at all certain that the mobility package would come at all. Because the resistance from the Eastern European countries was great. Nevertheless, we implemented the concept with the greatest possible risk and are now first movers.

How does your hotel concept and equipment differ from other hotel boxes? 

Our first idea was to buy hotel containers on the market and set them up. But we had to realize that there is no such thing at all. There are sleeping containers, which you also know from refugee camps. But they are made of lightweight construction and do not meet the building code requirements for a hotel. For example, fire protection, sound insulation, insulation regulations, etc. have to be taken into account. We need a building permit just like for any normal house construction. 

For us it was important that the guest, who usually has a very long and stressful working day behind him, finds a small oasis of well-being. We are building 4 small, high quality single rooms in a real 45 foot overseas container made of corten steel. Each room has its own shower room and toilet. This is perhaps even more important for professional drivers than a wide bed. Ours is 90 cm wide - the beds in the trucks are usually only 70 or 80 cm wide. 

Of course there is international satellite TV, free internet, air conditioning, ventilation, ambient lighting and electric blinds in front of the large windows. The outside areas are camera-monitored.

Booking is done through our own platform my.roatel.com. And since we don't have any staff on site, check-in works purely digitally and the key is also sent by e-mail or SMS to your cell phone. And the next day, we send the invoice directly to the employer by e-mail - if desired.

You work in partnerships with other sites. Are the containers then rented or sold? For which sites is your concept relevant, then? 

The site partners - which are, for example, large car dealerships near the highway - want to offer their customers as wide a range of products and services as possible. A hotel is one of them. But few of them want to realize their own construction project without knowing what the occupancy rate will be later and with the notoriously long bureaucratic approval processes. And they don't want to run a hotel either. That's where Roatel comes in. We set up the Roatel on just 1 day, run it ourselves and even pay the partner a lease. The partner only has to provide the connections (electricity, water). Without these it does not go yet. We also take care of the technical implementation and the building permit procedure. And if the Roatel is always fully booked and there is still space available, we can always add a second Roatel. Or, theoretically, put one on top of the first Roatel.

We concentrate primarily on locations close to the autobahn. But the customer structure has shown us that we seem to have hit a nerve with the concept, because a large proportion of our guests are craftsmen, business people or private travelers. In this respect, we are now also looking specifically at locations where there are no hotels, but which are conveniently located. 

"We see a development in 2 directions on the hotel market: On the one hand, high-priced offers in the luxury segment, on the other hand, low-priced hotels in the economy segment."

What can a guest look forward to with you? What is the feedback from guests after their stay? Does design also play a role? 

Let's be honest: Our guests are usually only looking for a bed to sleep in and a bathroom with a toilet. The Roatel is not suitable for longer stays, although our rooms are also booked on a weekly basis, especially by craftsmen and fitters. 

Our guest can be sure that his room is freshly cleaned and the bed is freshly made. There are of course fresh towels, soap and shampoo. The guest can park partly directly in front of the room door or at least in the immediate vicinity. You don't have to check in anywhere in person, everything is contactless and digital. Especially in the Corona era, this was a plus point for our concept. 

The design was very important for us. Our shareholder, who builds the Roatels in Lower Saxony, is a producer of high-quality kitchens and built-in furniture. He placed a lot of emphasis on durable and high-quality materials. This may be more expensive in production at first, but the care and maintenance costs are lower in the long run. In addition, each guest feels that he is valued and that he is safe in the room. If you woke up in a Roatel room and didn't know you were in a container, you wouldn't believe it. The containers we use are extra high (high cube) and extra wide (pallet wide). This allows us to reach a ceiling height of 2.50m after interior finishing. That's more than in many an apartment. 

How high is the demand for hotel beds in Germany at the moment and how do you think the market will develop? 

We see a development in 2 directions on the hotel market: On the one hand, high-priced offers in the luxury segment, on the other hand, low-priced hotels in the economy segment. That's where we see ourselves. 

However, we are in a completely new sub-segment, which was only created by the mobility package. The large hotel chains are reluctant to adopt the decentralized business model, especially since they still have to recover from the Corona crisis. As a first mover, we are now creating facts and setting up in the best locations, first in Germany and then in other European countries. We are already in talks with a mineral oil company about locations in France. In Germany alone, 120,000 professional drivers spend the night on and along the highways every night. That doesn't even include private and business drivers. A huge potential. We will soon launch a crowd-funding campaign on Seedmatch and really get started

roatel.com

©Roatel

Co-founder, Ralf-Peter Kals and Christian Theisen ©roatel