Address by the chairman of the Association of Historicl Hotels In Poland Mr. Jerzy Donimirski Turing the Historic Hotels of Europe meeting in Anholt (Germany) on the 13th of October 2008. During this meeting the Association was admitted in the European organization.
Ladies and Gentelmen
Thank you for your invitation.
Our country in now a part of European Union and we would like to introduce our organization in its structures. I hope that we can get some inspiration by joining your organization and our common work would lead us both ways to better results of our work.
A few words of myself as of an example of an average member of Polish Historical Hotels. I studied architecture in Poland till 1985 and later emigrated to Germany and US. After the fall of communism I returned to Poland, took over inherited historical building and renovated it. I was successful and decided to go on for restoring old building professionally for life. I thought that converting these old buildings in to hotels would be the most interesting and challenging occupation of mine. So it is till now! The first hotel of mine was done in year 2000 by now there are four and one still some under construction. Having the hotel already done it was half of the work – to run the hotel of this style required to build the team to run it. For me it was quite an experience to find, train and putt together staff of caring and dedicated people.
Me and other owners and managers of Historical Hotels in Poland went through similar experience of restoring building and collecting the staff for hotel. In that sense we are the first generation of hotel-people in new Poland who are putting together the history and the future. As soon as I realized that I was fully involved in this very special historic hotel business I put a question to myself: what kind of world I have entered!? I realized that everywhere in Poland similar people to me did the same: historic hotels.
Thanks to Mr. Kaniewski & his wife who have monitored for years hotels & restaurants in the country and wrote books and guides about this business, I have learnt about people who are now present members of polish organization.
About a year ago 15 people owners and managers met together and reacted spontaneously to an idea of founding a social and professional platform for cooperation. The main goal of ours is to promote our hotels – homes in the right way and to send a clear message to people what are: “Historical Hotels in Poland”.
Once again I would like to say thank you for being here and I think this is the right time and the right place and You are the right people to invite You to visit our hotels in Poland!
Why an association? /Krzysztof Kaniewski/
The intention to create an association of private owners of historic sites used commercially for hotel and restaurant purposes was drifting in my mind for many years when I was repeatedly visiting these exceptional places as a journalist. I was always impressed by their climate, which partly came from the particular approach their owners exhibited toward them, owners for whom renovation and exploitation in this form has been and continues to be a way of life.
In other words, this is a passion they are fully dedicated to, with all the resulting consequences. It is them who, while applying their own stamp to these places, became heirs to a tradition of hospitality and openness that these premises fulfilled during non-commercial functions in the past and under a previous ownership. While it is difficult to fully recreate the climate of bygone years, it is nice to succeed to liaise with it in an entirely novel reality and function, even if only partly so. And when we do succeed, it will be worth indeed – I deem so as a journalist – to catalog this collective attainment, to bring together the hosts, to introduce them more extensively and do something together.
So I frequently spoke with many of the owners, devising plans to create a collective, an association perhaps. Discussions were very enjoyable and, even if they did not result directly in any specific steps, they undoubtedly brought us closer – as I reckon today – to the definition of a certain common idea and a program of mutual support.
A breakthrough in the talks happened early this year during a conversation with Mr. Jerzy Donimirski, the owner of a chain of historic hotels in Kraków and in the Korzkwia Castle, who said to me (I quote from memory): "Krzysztof, sir, enough talk, let’s do something at last". And his words became flesh. And it is Mr. Donimirski himself who was elected Chairman of the Association of Historic Hotels in Poland, during the founding convention in the Palace in Staniszów.
We have thus a group of historical sites’ owners to whom this exceptional business activity is the realization of their particular attitude toward these places – their respect for every historical brick, every historical rafter and every - if still preserved – architectural detail or wall painting. Let these words suffice to describe this extraordinary coincidence that was formally integrated in the association’s structure, a structure in which, as it turned out, I was enlisted as a member of the board and on the behalf of which I shall, by the will of its members, continue to work.
