"Now we can get away with a black eye," says Manfred Valentin. The innkeeper will be allowed to reopen the Mariabrunn Castle's beer garden from 18 May.
The beer gardens may open again from May 18th. When he heard that, said Manfred Valentin, Managing Director of Mariabrunn Castle, "we were brutally taken aback". Valentin and his partner Robert Matthes watched the decisive press conference live with Prime Minister Markus Söder and Minister of Economics Hubert Aiwanger on TV yesterday. "Now we can get away with a black eye," says Valentin, who has only been in the castle business with the popular beer garden for a year. 800 people can sit at the tables in Mariabrunn. "We do not yet know what the conditions will be, but we will definitely meet them."
Only: "If only 50 guests are allowed in, it won't pay off," says the host, about 200 of them should already be. Ten full-time employees as well as 40, 50 temporary workers work full time in the beer garden. In the end everyone - like so many workers - was on short-time work. It remains to be seen how many employees Valentin and Matthes will bring back on May 18. Despite the difficult time since the middle of March, "we didn't think about quitting!" Says Manfred Valentin and is already looking forward to his guests. Because, he says, "99 percent are happy when they can go back to the beer garden".
The Dachau Hotel Central had been open 365 days a year for 25 years - until the big shutdown took place in March. "Sure, the idea sometimes came up to give up," says hotel manager Mirjam Engel. But now, after the Bavarian government decided yesterday to re-allow the hotel and tourism sector from May 30, the signs are different. "Now we can finally accommodate private guests again, which we are currently not allowed to do," says Engel. With just the few business travelers who recently lost themselves in the 47 rooms, the four-star hotel with 19 employees would not have been able to continue operating for long, Engel says.
Thomas Zimmerly
