Boutique Hotelier Almanac Expanding Under Unique Father-Daughter Dynamic

It’s a big month for Almanac Hotels. The luxury boutique hotel chain — which launched its first hotel in Barcelona in 2018 — has two back-to-back openings. Its second property soft launches in Vienna in late February, and its third hotel opens in Prague in early March.

“If I could have decided, I wouldn’t have chosen to open both of these properties within one month,” said Tina Haselbacher, the Vienna-based owner of Almanac Hotels. "My inbox is completely full. But it’s also a lot of fun."

Creating hotels isn’t new for Almanac. Its founder, Herbert Haselbacher — a former Austrian professional basketball player, owner of property developer WSF Group, and Tina’s father — has been in the business for over 30 years.

But what is new is actually running the hotels. Herbert and his team have always found a place or property and developed a concept, but they have always handed the hotel over to operating companies to run.

That changed in 2017. The family business came up with the Almanac concept in 2017 and then decided to go all in. The process, Haselbacher admits, hasn’t always been easy. Figuring out how to operate the 91-room Almanac Barcelona, located just off the Passeig de Gràcia, came with a set of ch