Adaptive Reuse Is Quietly Reshaping New Hotel Projects in DACH

Ask someone to picture a hotel groundbreaking, and they'll probably imagine a construction crane and an empty lot. But a growing share of hotel projects under construction in the DACH region skip the empty lot entirely. They start with a building that already exists, such as an old office block, a former retail space, or sometimes a landmark that's simply overdue for a new life.

As shown in our THP hotel database, 256 in-progress hotel projects across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are currently classified as refurbishments or conversions. And that's not a side trend. That's a meaningful chunk of the region's active pipeline, and it gives you a glimpse into how developers are thinking about new hotel projects.

Why Convert Instead of Build?

A few practical factors explain the shift. Prime locations in major German-speaking cities are becoming more and more built out. Land is expensive, permitting takes time, and construction costs haven't exactly gotten friendlier in recent years. An existing building—especially one already zoned for commercial use—skips a lot of that friction.

Germany's hotel market illustrates this pretty well. Reporting on the German market in 2026 describes it as a market defined by selective growth, conversions, and operational precision—one of the most active hotel construction markets in Europe. Conversions aren't a footnote in that pipeline. They're part of how the market keeps growing without simply running out of space.

There's also a design angle. Office buildings tend to have generous floor plates and central locations, which is exactly what a hotel developer wants, minus the years of site assembly. Retail buildings, hit hard by the shift to e-commerce, often come with ground-floor space that's practically begging for a gorgeous lobby or event room.

The Projects Making the Case

A few real examples show this isn't just an abstract trend. In Berlin, the Clayton Hotel Tiergarten is taking shape inside what used to be the Novotel Berlin Am Tiergarten. Rather than starting over, the 274-room property is undergoing a full refurbishment, set to open in Q4 2026 with a restaurant, bar, meeting and events center, sauna, steam room, and gym. It's also part of something bigger: the Tiergarten Tower development, a mixed-use project combining office and hotel space—a small sign that conversions and mixed-use thinking often go hand in hand.

Salzburg offers a different kind of example. The Kimpton Hotel Salzburg is being built inside the former AVA Hof on Ferdinand-Hanusch-Platz, transforming a historic courtyard into a 119-room, 5-star property with rooms and suites up to 65 square meters, a restaurant, bar, wellness and fitness areas, and modern meeting spaces. The surrounding redevelopment is even bigger in scope: around 16,300 square meters that also includes retail, office space, apartments, conference areas, and underground parking. It's set to open in 2028.

Together, these two projects show adaptive reuse working at different scales and in different markets. Neither is a small side project. Both represent serious commitments to reusing what's already there instead of starting from an empty lot.

What It Means for the Rest of the Pipeline

None of this means new-build construction is going away as plenty of ground-up projects are still moving through the DACH pipeline. But hotel conversions are no longer the exception you mention as an aside. With 256 refurbishment and conversion projects currently in progress across the region, according to THP's database, this is a strategy developers are leaning on purposefully.

For hotel suppliers, architects, and hospitality watchers, this is definitely worth paying attention to. A conversion project has a different rhythm and story than a new-build. It has different timelines, different design constraints, and different opportunities. As adaptive reuse keeps showing up across DACH's hotel pipeline, it's shaping not just where hotels get built, but how.